Cosmoprof panel highlights evolving expectations from brands

On the second day of the Cosmoprof India exhibition, top brands confabulate about the second skin of beauty, which is packaging. The session chaired by Rahul Bose, founder and CEO, Neural Hinge, enlightens the audience that it’s actually not the second skin, but the first skin of beauty, since packaging is the first interaction of any consumer before the product.

It features voices from OEMs, primary and secondary packagers, and design innovators such as Zoeb Kanorwalla, chief designer, PGP Glass; Karan Mehta, director of Efficient Plastech; Daniele Tozza of IDM Automation; and Pooja Kharb, founder, IdeaXip.

The discussion dives deep into how packaging performs across aesthetics, functionality, and sustainability. From tactile finishes to engineered precision, panellists explored how machinery, materials, and design come together to deliver impact.

Bose opens with an interesting remark to all the panellists, “Where would you want to be introduced in the value chain when you talk to brands looking to develop a new concept, where your ability to add to the end result maximises?” 

Daniele Tozza of IDM Automation responds, “The best time for us is when the design is still not 100% defined.” He believes that when the design is still in the finalisation stage, both the stakeholders can work together to make the product work. He further adds that if IDM is in contact with the design, just when it's 90% defined, both of them can study together, can modify the machine, and reduce time and cost.

For PGP glass, it’s a different sweet spot. One, where the design is being introduced to the company, and the other, which it does often, is where PGP creates its own portfolio of designs. Zoeb Kanorwalla says, the company progresses into the production feasibility and the viability of the product.

He concurs with Tozza’s point where the company ensures the design is viable on machines and it should be producible. This is done by keeping track of the market trends. According to Kanorwalla, the ideal situation is, “When a designer works hand-in-hand with the manufacturer to gauge the limitations of the process, to maximise the desirability of the client, and the feasibility in terms of efficiency and good quality output.”

Packaging that performs

Brands want packaging that performs. Performance comes with variabilities and parameters such as weight, cost, recyclability, aesthetics, strength or line speed. For Efficient Plastech, it’s simple: Providing uniqueness on the shelf without adding too much to the cost for large brands. Karan Mehta, director, shares an example of Maybelline’s Fit Me Compact powder.

Efficient achieved uniqueness through adding textures, embossing, and tactile finishes on the plastic itself. Using chemical etching to give a soft touch on a rough surface, using the play of light between a glossy and a rough surface to give a brand standout for an image, the logo standing out for them, or using a unique colour of oil.

Kanorwalla speaks about glass being an honest material. Glass reveals all its flaws. There are challenges in the production of glass and it is complex. Then glass comprises first skin and second skin which is textures and decorations. He says, in the case of perfumes, glass embodies the basic jewel of the packaging. “A large component in the customer recall for fragrance is in the packaging,” Kanorwalla adds.

Packaging players or manufacturers are somewhere to be considered at the ideation and design stage of the product

PGP Glass produces 1,700 tonnes of glass in a day, and in most cases, glass performs decently because of the beauty aspect. Interestingly, glass starts with the idea of beauty and sustainability, which is a packaging that performs.

Kanorwalla shares different aspects of glass packaging. He explains that within glass, you want a certain personality for the packaging. There is a large component which is personality driven, for example, a wine or a cough syrup are not packaged or served in a plastic or paper glass. Secondly, glass allows light to pass through, which has an element of colour play. And then comes the tactile touch with different textures and weight. According to Kannorwalla, these are important aspects for a person to subconsciously feel the value of the contents.

For IDM Automation, there are three lines of efficiency: Speed of the machine; efficiency of the project - how to save time for my customers and workers. Efficiency of machine, line and project.

Approach and perspectives

A pilot project of a brand that wants to launch serum, packaging considerations have to be made, and approach has to be set. Where do you start?

Kanorwalla tells the audience that there has to be tremendous clarity in the brief to begin the design project such as chemical composition of the serum, cost and positioning of the product, and what is the story behind. For PGP, understanding the story behind any project is essential, and then the team gives it a shape in terms of physical shape and form.

Based on this, the team decides whether to go for a premium high-end glass, and other elements such as amber glass or UV protection. “We also have the spectrum for high efficiency as well as low efficiency for projects which require extreme levels of uniqueness,” explains Kanorwalla. These low efficiency projects are an absolutely paramount requirement of the designer to have a unique feature which might cause problems.

While the approach is a bit different when it comes to plastics. Mehta says, Efficient Plastech starts by picking conversations such as; what is the application of the product, does the brand need control dispensing in terms of volume, or does it need application in terms of a particular location on the body?

He points out some of the viable options: pumps, droppers, applicator packs where instead of using a standard dropper, you can have a stick applicator which can be directly applied on the skin. Mehta says, “A lot of the decisions about what packaging design we would recommend, would be on how the product is intended to be used.”

He adds that droppers and pumps are hard to recycle. If they are not designed to be separated easily, it will kill the recyclability.

Although, from a machinery standpoint, Tozza specifies that keeping the machines and shopfloor clean is an important part. He believes, “With cleaner and protected systems, you spend much time in creating the product, good design, and going onto the shelf without any contamination.”

Final thoughts…

Be it the first skin or the second skin of beauty, packaging is the most crucial element of any product. We discerned lots of trends and variabilities which go into any simple conversation that the brand has with its packaging vendor.

Structural integrity and design are the two most important factors. Kanorwalla believes that the future lies in being prudent about sustainability. “We should make the right choices in materials, not over design because we see ample examples of multiple materials being used for simple packaging,” he adds.

Kanorwalla affirms that it won't be too difficult to build the bridge between the client and the manufacturer in terms of producing sustainable packaging, with the new-age eco-conscious consumers.

Packaging players or manufacturers are somewhere to be considered at the ideation and design stage of the product. It follows the story a brand wants to tell, and what better than packaging to convey it, with incorporation of brand ethos and values such as sustainability, premiumisation, and more.