Versatile, sustainable, safe. That’s CANVAS Airless, the latest innovation from Quadpack, a leading name in the manufacture and development of cosmetics packaging.
Founded in 2003, Quadpack has grown from a small business into a global company with offices in Europe, the US and Asia on the back of its ability to combine manufacturing flexibility, sustainability and innovation, successfully offering smart, modular solutions that cater to customer requirements and, at the same time, meet the demand for increasingly short lead times. Elements that you’ll also find in CANVAS Airless: the new airless collection produced using bag-in bottle technology, an evolution of its bi-injection blow moulding process.
Preforms are bi-injected at Quadpack’s airless manufacturing facility in Germany, and are then blown into the desired shape, a two-stage process that requires less investment and less development time than custom airless packaging using a piston system.
Here to tell us about CANVAS Airless in more detail, along with the numerous advantages this new solution offers, is Pierre-Antoine Henry, Head of Market Development at Quadpack.
Can you explain what the bag-in-bottle solution is exactly and how it works?
Airless functionality is achieved through a new bag-in-bottle technology, a patented process developed with Quadpack technology partner Inotech. Bag-in-bottle is a two-phase process of bi-injection and blow moulding, to produce a pouch-based system with a rigid outer bottle and a flexible inner pouch. The technology enables different shapes and is therefore not restricted to cylindrical packs like piston-based airless packs. As the bulk is dispensed, the pouch separates from the outer wall and delaminates. During manufacture, both the outer and the inner are bi-injected into a single, compact preform, the bag being a delamination of the inner layer from the outer layer. Our mid-term plan is to ship these preforms to any of Quadpack’s facilities or partners around the world, which would save on carbon footprint, thanks to their mall size. The pack can then be blown locally, in the desired shape, for an accelerated time to market.
Can you tell us about the features of CANVAS Airless: what formats does it come in? What products is this packaging recommended for?
CANVAS Airless gives beauty brands the freedom to express their unique identity with airless packaging. A host of different shapes can be achieved from a standard preform blown into a given form, which reduces investment, while late differentiation means that a fully customised pack can be delivered with minimised lead times.
Airless technology offers protection from external contamination, making it ideal for advanced natural and organic formulations. Airless protection reduces the need for artificial preservatives, while prolonging shelf life. The pack can be used at any angle, even upside down. The restitution rate of airless is high, but that of CANVAS Airless is above average, at 97 per cent. So now you can use nearly all of the product with little to no waste!
The bag-in-bottle system also means that CANVAS Airless uses 15 per cent less plastic compared to an equivalent piston-based airless pack. What’s more, recyclable and recycled materials can be used such as PET and rPET, while further sustainable injectable materials, a metal-free pump and refill formats are planned for the future.
Does CANVAS Airless give you the option of choosing different materials or is there just one version?
CANVAS Airless can be made with a choice of materials. The range comes with an LLDPE pouch and PET outer bottle as standard, both recyclable materials. Current outer options include rPET and PETG, while inner options include surlyn.
Might we say that CANVAS Airless reflects your mission to perfection, i.e. helping beauty brands perform? In other words, turning dreams into successful products and creating packaging that caters beautifully to customer demands, including on the customization front, with numerous options to choose from?
Yes, of course! It enables greater freedom of expression. Brand can choose oval, square, convex, concave and other forms without additional outlay or time delay and, besides an exciting range of custom shapes, CANVAS Airless can be decorated using a range of techniques, including hot-stamping, silk-screening and colour-matching.