Saving on materials, saving on the finishing stage, quality gains for all resins, including transition resins, avenues leading to new designs, the Roctool Beauty Solutions technology meets the expectations of a market looking for rational manufacturing methods to produce eco-responsible products.
By inductively heating and then rapidly cooling the mould of a plastic pack, this technology simplifies the production of thinner-walled premium parts with unparalleled surface qualities, whether glossy, matt or textured, thus bypassing the need for secondary decoration steps.
"Today, there is a lot of questioning about the pack as a whole, about the quantity of material used, but also about the material used and the design. To address all these challenges, pack manufacturers need help. We want to stand out as a solution that is complementary to the know-how of processors in the beauty sector by opening up possibilities in terms of moulding, material saving and surface rendering," explains Mathieu Boulanger. "Either the converter is proactive and equips himself with our technology, as is the case with Texen, with whom we concluded a non-exclusive partnership agreement last year, or it is the brand that proposes the technology directly to its suppliers," he continues.
A sustainable approach as of the injection phase
"The use of induction allows controlling the temperature, allowing the material to be more fluid and therefore to perfectly match the surface of the mould. This means we can reduce the part thickness, offer material savings, but also find the right temperature to sublimate the resin, whether it is standard, recycled or biosourced," specifies the manager.
The Roctool equipment also allows for high value-added surface effects. The company will be giving a conference on this topic [1] at the Luxe Pack Monaco trade show. Also during the event, Roctool will premiere a replication of a velvet effect with no completion stage. "These new Velvet effects result directly from the surface of the tooling and give a fabric appearance to a plastic part, with no painting or coating steps required," details Mathieu Boulanger.
An approach favoured by Clinique
The Clinique brand of The Estée Lauder Group chose the Roctool technology to apply it, in collaboration with the packaging developer Pinard, to the bottles of its flagship product, the Clarifying Lotion. The group says it intends to roll out this process to its entire portfolio of brands.
"At The Estée Lauder Companies, we invest and innovate at every stage of our packaging processes to expand sustainable solutions and enable our brands to deliver premium, quality experiences to our consumers," explains Daniel Ramos, Senior Vice President, Global Packaging, Estée Lauder Companies.
Like other big names in other sectors who have also been won over by the Roctool approach, the cosmetics giant sees an opportunity to develop cutting-edge processes for sustainable prestige packaging.
"Consumers are now taking interest in manufacturing methods, and brands who know this, are relaying this message. We are in line with this approach and the next few years will see the use of the Roctool technology grow in very specific areas of beauty, but always keeping in mind these three key priorities: reducing manufacturing steps, moving to 100% eco-responsible transition resins while offering a higher level of design," concludes Mathieu Boulanger.
