Conference report | caps & closures
(Chart 2). The sauce market will lead plastic dispensing closure demand, accounting for more than 50% of absolute unit volume growth. Dussimon highlighted a clear but developing
trend of innovation shifting from markets such as personal care and cosmetics, where dispens- ing closures are well established, into the food sector to enhance use and shelf impact. “There is a trend to take non-food features and
transfer them to foods,” she said. “This is not about looking like a beauty product but raising attention.”
Functional dispensing ViCap Systems CEO Roger Wilfinger explained how
remaining technically functional,” he said. “But we are reaching an asymptote.” With the biggest weight savings realised in many
cases, the challenge for designers now is to think outside of the box but not to move too far ahead of consumer acceptance, he said. “Consumer research can be polarised. ‘It performs well and I like it, or ‘it feels cheap and I don’t want it’. Eco-conception cannot go beyond a level of consumer maturity, itself defined by the brand image,” he said.
Adding value in food Design also plays a key part in adding-value for food brand owners, according to Karine Dussimon, Senior Analyst Packaging in the London office of Euromonitor International . “Closure innovation in food packaging is a way to add value and this is particularly important in developed markets,” she said. Dussimon said the food sector accounts for around 40% of the 1,500bn closures used annually in packaging applications worldwide. She said the company’s analysis predicts demand for closures in food packag- ing applications to grow in most world regions up to 2019, with the developing markets seeing fastest rates as consumers shift from buying loose to packaged products. “There are a lot of staple foods in Asia and South America now bveing sold in packaging,” she said. Turning to plastic closures in particular, she pointed
to CAGR demand growth of 3% or more for both plastic screw closures and dispensing closures in food packaging applications (Chart 1). The biggest food sector market for screw caps is dairy and flavoured milk products and Dussimon said growing demand for dairy products in developing markets, and particularly China, will add a further 11bn units to this by 2019
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the company’s functional dispensing closure design aims to open up a new market in healthy beverages, targeting consumer demand for extended shelf-life vitamin-enriched drinks. He said its design, which looks like a sports cap but incorporates a plunger actuator that releases dry functional additives into the beverage, is effective both in ease-of-use and performance (dried vitamins have a long shelf life of up to 18 months while the company’s own studies measured a loss of 30-50% of the vitamins from conventional alternatives in just 30 days). Several companies are
already using the ViCap closure. Wilfinger said the three-part closure design is currently being injection moulded by Alpla and is filled and foil-sealed at one of five plants across Germany, Italy and Russia. Cost is said to have been a key consideration during the development of the closure design. “We are in nutrition but in the beverage sector we know we need very good pricing,” he said. “Production is the same as a conventional sports closure except we have to seal it,” he said.
Stacking up the benefits Adding value was also the goal in development of the Stackcap screw cap design, developed by Smooth HIP and manufactured by Bericap. Smooth HIP managing director Arno Rabie explained how the incorporation of moulded grooves in place of the traditional knurling allows a standard bottle cap to gain a second life as a simple ‘snap together’ construction toy. He said the concept can create on-shelf interest,
Left: ViCap’s dispensing closure design aims to open new markets
Left: Euromonitor International’s Senior Analyst Packaging Karine Dussimon
Above:
Spadel Group Packaging Manager
Philippe Henon July/August 2015 | INJECTION WORLD 23
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