Premium Beauty News - Your strategy in the airless packaging segment appears to be fruitful.
Andy Gatesy - Since our investment into airless packaging in South Korea, TAP - our airless business - is growing rapidly. Our focus is upon innovative standard packing with easy customization. We have developed over 20 standard lines since we started this business, including for instance, double walled packaging for the high-end market; hi-tech packs including shut off nozzles, and innovative packaging such as dual airless and airless packs with specially designed applicators.
We are not just another pump company but a packaging specialist and we are bringing to our customers all our creativity in this segment. For instance, we have recently invested in an automated assembly machine for airless pouch containers.
French beauty brand Lancôme has taken advantage of this new technology within Toly in order to launch Genefic HD, its new men’s line. Lancôme has also launched new piston type packs with Toly for their lines of ’Renergie Microlift’ & ’Blanc Expert’.
In the pipeline are many other prestige launches for luxury brands using our airless technology.
Premium Beauty News - What do you think can still make the difference on the cosmetic packaging market, where there’s a fierce competition?
Andy Gatesy - Toly as a group has changed a lot over the past 5 years. We have expanded from one European factory focused upon compacts, to investments in 4 separate manufacturing locations in Malta, China, India and South Korea. In addition, our product portfolio has been diversified across make up, skincare, fragrance and promotional items.
Creativity is inherent within our organization. We challenge ourselves continuously to come up with new packaging concepts, application systems and production techniques. Even in times of recession, when many companies have cut back their investments on innovation, the Toly group launched more new concepts than ever before.
Being a privately owned company, we still have the speed and flexibility to follow the changing market in order to make the relevant investments.
Premium Beauty News - What is the outcome of 2009 for your company, and what are your forecasts for this year?
Andy Gatesy - 2009 was a challenging year for the Toly group. Our customers sold less product and also undertook a massive de-stocking exercise. We also ended our long-term alliance with Geka Brush mid way through the year.
Despite falling business levels, we increased our customer base worldwide and continued to diversify our product portfolio. We launched a stock smooth torque lipstick mechanism; we launched our own lipgloss and mascara strategy, and we focused upon creativity and customer satisfaction.
Our factory in India took off, with many new products for the local market. We are the first Western packaging company to set up in India for the make-up industry and we really have a state of the art factory based in Dehradun This strategy has been rewarded and after the first 4 months of 2010, our business is increasing dramatically. Business levels are up across all our market segments and we are now investing heavily in capacity to meet these new production requirements. Ten new moulding machines have recently been ordered across the group as well as new decorating machines and automations.
We are also looking to strengthen our position in new markets such as Eastern Europe, China and South America and I am confident that 2010 will be a great year for the group.
Premium Beauty News - Does your business stop at packaging?
Andy Gatesy - We still see ourselves as a packaging company and we do not offer filling services. Instead, we prefer to support the fillers in the different markets such that they promote our packaging to the brands. Should we offer filling services ourselves, then we would create more competition and continue to blur the separation between packaging and formulation specialists.
