MONTE CARLO, Monaco — At the most recent edition of Luxe Pack Monaco, aisles were humming with attendees on the hunt for premium packaging solutions — not least with a sustainability bent.
It was a season of firsts for the trade show, which ran from Oct. 2 to 4 in Monte Carlo, Monaco. One was the advent of a direct Paris-to-Monaco TGV train running specially for Luxe Pack-goers. Another was the new Luxe Home section, dedicated to interiors.
The fair showcased lots of creative projects with eco-design and sustainable cosmetics packaging solutions, including artificial intelligence-created hair care packaging and paper fragrance samples, tubes and ribbons.
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The Grimaldi Forum, the venue near the Mediterranean Sea where the event was held, attracted 10,420 attendees, up 10.5 percent on-year. This session, it was palpable that green was not just a theme, but a reality.
The main focus for everyone in the industry is to transition to more sustainable practices, according to Denis Maurin, president of sales and innovation at HCT. That’s heading in the right direction, but he believes there could be a higher quotient.
“We’ve lost a little bit of the speed of innovation,” said Maurin, speaking of the industry at large. “So we’re trying to really push the limits again and go faster, develop more.”
As customers are investing less in custom tooling today than in the past, HCT tooled some creations itself, such as new refillable cosmetics Hush Jars, including one version with an aluminium cap and base.
“It’s very thick and nice — that makes you want to keep it,” said Maurin, adding other iterations are made with ceramic or concrete.
HCT is just finishing tooling another line, called Pure Essence, which includes screw-cap bottles in PET for the likes of lip gloss or mascara. The design focus on the threads, the screw-like patterns at the neck of a bottle and inside a cap that enable tops to turn and seal onto flacons.
“It will click. You can play with it, because it goes very fast,” said Maurin, about the spin. “So you use the thread as a new design element. With a tiny detail like that, we will expand our line and add something unique.”
Dominic Bakic, chief executive officer of Bakic Packaging, also finds there to be a bit of a slow-down.
“From a macroeconomic point of view, [the industry’s business] is a little less active at the moment. First-half year was strong, but the second-half year — let’s see how it develops.”
The slowdown is due to a confluence of factors, including customers filling less orders today due to overstock and macroeconomic conditions, such as inflation, especially in Europe, which can dampen people’s desire to spend like before.
But that’s by no means stopping innovation. Bakic was introducing at Luxe Pack an AI-created packaging line. For it, the company’s designers were trained to become prompt engineers as part of Bakic’s ideation and design creation process.
“It really is interesting,” he said. “We have defined our own prompt database.” Bakic explained the exercise challenged his team’s way of thinking.
“What the AI is proposing is completely different very often from what we were thinking about,” Bakic said. “It doesn’t have the restriction of ‘Can it be done?’ [and] ‘What type of material?’ and so on and so forth.”
The narrative for the line, called Building Blocks, was “cyberpunk,” “Gotham city” and “urban-style hair care.” Each linear HTP bottle, in saturated colors proposed by AI, snaps together and can be customized.
Meanwhile, Dow was presenting its next generation of Surlyn.
“Dow has an ambition to produce 3 million metric tons of circular or sustainable polymers by 2030,” said Imran Munshi, global market segment leader consumer applications at Dow. “As part of that commitment and strategy, we have looked all across our market segments at how can we support our customers and the industry to reduce consumption of virgin fossil.”
Dow launched two grades of Surlyn. One produced using mixed plastic waste is called Surlyn CIR.
“This is collected, processed, made into a pyrolysis oil that is then cleaned up and fed into our production process, as we have historically used fossil materials,” Munshi said.
The company also developed a manner to use bio-waste for Surlyn REN.
“These are materials coming from, for example, the restaurant industry — used cooking oil,” he said. “That is transformed into a bio-NAPFA that is also used into our current production process.”
Syrlyn has historically been used to make fragrance bottle caps, for instance.
“You still have the beauty of Surlyn,” said Munhshi, referring to the material’s translucent or frosted characteristics. “You can still have that design freedom.”
Adhespack displayed its latest eco-friendly sampling solutions. One fragrance sample is made wholly of paper — a combination of FSC Greenpack paper and Adhespack’s microencapsulation technology — without the use of either plastic or aluminum. This sample is fully recyclable, compostable and biodegradable in 154 days. The creation won the Best Sustainable Packaging Innovation award in the Luxe Pack in Green competition this year.
Other novelties from Adhespack included its Scent Label made of paper and Scent Card with a scented label attached.
Cosmogen featured its patented Paper Stick, created from 78 percent FSC paper that is wholly recyclable and can be used with solid formulas, such as lipstick or deodorant stick. This comes in 15-ml. and 45-ml. versions. Users rotate the bottom of the packaging to make the tube of product descend inside.
Furlanis had a nontraditional take on ribbons that can be used with outer packaging, creating them from paper threads. These recyclable ribbons can be made to measure, with different textures, weaves, organic colors and printing.
The idea for the trade show’s Luxe Home section came mostly from a discussion of Luxe Pack’s advisory board, which meets yearly to talk about luxury market-related trends.
“We said wellness is very popular right now in Europe, but also in Asia,” said Fabienne Germond, director of Luxe Pack trade shows.
“This market is literally exploding now,” continued Nathalie Grosdidier, deputy general director of IDICE, Luxe Pack’s organizer, referring to interiors. “Luxe Pack is really the place where cross-fertilization is king. It’s not just packaging for cosmetics, it is packaging for the luxury markets.”
The new area counted 24 exhibitors — including Estal Beauty, Esobea, Les Verres, Fairdale and Scentys — coming exclusively from the interiors world. But many of Luxe Pack’s exhibitors have products such as candles and accessories, which naturally cross into that realm.
“It gives more visibility to this market,” Grosdidier said of the new space.