Pibiplast indeed stands as a company like no others, located in the small town of Correggio a few kilometres from Reggio Emilia, and which is finalizing the extension of its main factory with the addition, by the end of the year, of 4,000 sqm, representing a total surface area of 14,000 sqm.

Acquisitions

Firmly established, for the past several years, in the manufacturing of hollow plastic parts and injected caps and closures, using extrusion blow moulding and injection blow moulding techniques, it will have managed to take several strategic turns in time, essentially through acquisitions. After the takeover of the Bomal company in 2002, which enabled Piblipast to invest more heavily in the make-up segment, the Italian firm acquired, last year, a company, based near Turin and specialized in the manufacture of tubes, which became the Pibitubes Division, then it was the turn of Plastline, another company specialized in extrusion blow moulding for GDOs (large production series) to join the Group this year (25 people, 18 blow moulding machines). And that’s not all, since another acquisition in the domain of tubes is planned by the end of this year.

Pibiplast is finalizing the extension of its main factory with the addition, by the end of the year, of 4,000 sqm

So much so that the industrial strength of the Pibiplast Group already represents some 55 blow moulding machines, plus fifteen injection stretch blow moulding machines, forty five injection machines, 4 extrusion lines for the manufacture of tubes, a dozen screen printing machines and 8 hot stamping machines. "Integrating tubes in the manufacturing process appeared to us as a natural extension of our expertise in the area of beauty packaging," explained Stefania Bosi, Sales Director. "Our customers often ask us to supply some to them. It is a market where you have to be very responsive, very dynamic and very flexible in terms of swift order processing. We currently have a capacity of nearly 80 million tubes per year and our delivery times are in a range of four to six weeks at the most."

Make-up on the rise!

Eventually, over the past five years, the sector of packaging for colour cosmetics has gradually taken the upper hand in the activity of the Italian firm with nearly 40% of its turnover. Investments in machines conducted during the past year - to integrate in the supply chain all the industrial processes related to the manufacture of packaging for make-up, with three new production lines for fibre brushes to start with - have paid off.

The company recently presented two new complete lines of small mascara and lipgloss vials, one with a wide neck and the other thick-walled. "The development of complete lines remains a major focus for us, emphasised Bossi. In addition, and in conjunction with our specialization in tubes, we are also working on new lipstick applicators."