BOLOGNA, Italy — More than at any prior session of Cosmoprof Worldwide Bologna, companies exhibiting at this month’s fair were seriously walking the sustainability walk.
Sustainability was the theme of the 52nd edition of the five-day beauty trade show, which ended on March 18 here, including Cosmopack, its branch focused on packaging that ran March 14 to 17.
The topic was palpable in the aisles. There was the Cosmoprime section featuring many “green” corners, a “Green Selection” in the Extraordinary Gallery and in Cosmopack, a “factory” illustrating the “No.Co. — No Compromise” project, where each step of a natural scalp oil’s production was on display, for instance.
“What do we understand by sustainability? It’s not only to use sustainable raw materials in our products, but also to produce in a responsible way, to design the products in the most sustainable way,” said Tomasz Rathman, general manager and sales director at RPC Bramlage Division, at Cosmopack.
The company is taking tacks such as minimizing packaging weight, optimizing production processes and using different materials, like that which is post-consumer recycled, has post-industrial resins and bio-based materials.
“We are also trying to make our products as homogeneous as possible within our material range,” added Rathman, who explained that polypropylene bottles with polypropylene caps, for instance, make the recycling chain easy. “We are also very much focused on airless dispensers, trying to make them 100 percent plastic.”
Important, too, he said, is to teach the market and end-consumer about sustainability.
“There is so much confusion in the market because it’s a big word — ‘sustainability’ — and most people are not really aware of what it means,” agreed Thomas Trockel, vice president of sales at Bakic Packaging. “There is already the confusion about ‘is it recyclable or is it recycled?’ And the problem is how to really bring it in products.
“We are facing big issues — for example, in having enough raw material on the market, because the global players realize they need to buy the recycled materials,” he continued.
Trockel, referring to industry figures, said sustainable packaging can stem 50 percent from redesigns, 20 percent from material reduction and 50 percent from refillable, reusable solutions.
Bakic was at Cosmopack showcasing some redesigned packaging, with the minimum amount of plastics, green materials and multiple usage. “The challenge will be how to make packaging look valuable and nice without hurting the rules of sustainability,” Trockel said.
Aptar was highlighting sustainable solutions, as well. “We felt that today we had to improve the circular economy, it is our social responsibility to do it,” said Francesco Guerrieri, product line manager lotion pumps EMEA at the supplier.
“We are working in many directions, and now we are testing new materials,” he said.
Aptar’s sustainability drive began with its factories’ functions, and now the focus has shifted to products. “Today, what we are doing is mainly transforming the current solutions, but we are working in parallel to completely disrupt solutions,” Guerrieri said.
Sustainable solutions were being displayed by many hair-care companies, too.
Davide Bollati — president of Davines Group,owner of the Davines high-end hair-care brand and Comfort Zone and Skin Regimen skin-care brands that are distributed in more than 90 countries — said given the state of the world today, sustainable development can no longer be just a pie-in-the-sky marketing notion.
“The niche of sustainable products is becoming mainstream, for sure,” he said.
Although Davines has been focused on sustainability for years, Bollati still calls it “an ongoing journey. We continue to improve and challenge ourselves,” he said. “But we realize it is never enough. Today we should accelerate even more.”
As reported, last September the company unveiled its new 118,405-square-foot headquarters, called Davines Village, in Parma, Italy, which was created to combine aesthetics, nature and performance, while positively impacting employees and the environment.
“The energy in the company has changed a lot since the opening. The Village has become a new starting point,” he said, adding that a pharmaceutical botanical garden will be unveiled there soon.
At Cosmoprof, Davines was presenting its new Solu/Sea Salt Scrub Cleanser paste, billed to have a reduced environmental effect due to its Zero Impact bio-based plastic packaging and quickly biodegradable formula that contains a high percentage of natural ingredients, including sea salt from saltpans in Paceco, Italy.
The Let it Go Circle de-stressing hair mask was being added to The Circle Chronicles line, formulated without silicone, parabens or artificial colors. It is produced using renewable energy sources and comes in carbon-neutral packaging, thanks to reforestation and forest protection projects.
Davines’ revenues have been growing by double digits annually over the past nine years, and climbed more than 15 percent in 2018 to 148 million euros.
Also present at Cosmoprof was Nashi Argan, a seven-year-old professional brand offering a range of hair- and skin-care products whose formulas contain organic-certified argan and linseed oil. They’re all manufactured in parent company Landoll’s production sites fueled with renewable energy and come in packaging created primarily from recycled post-consumer waste.
Even though online retailing has cannibalized some sales of professional beauty products in stores, Fabrizio Ascoli, owner of Landoll, maintains that “a physical experience is key in beauty.”
Given that, Nashi Argan is further building its brick-and-mortar presence with the aim of enhancing customer experience. At Cosmoprof, it was introducing a new branded retail concept for third-party salons. The idea, according to Ascoli, is to allow consumers to experience Nashi Argan at various touch points that already include its own salons, the first two of which opened in Milan at the end of 2017, and monobrand stores.
Twenty-five in-salon shops will debut in Madrid and Barcelona in coming months in partnership with hair salon chain Marco Aldany.
Further, four new Nashi Argans monobrand stores are to open in Italy in the next few months, while the first Nashi Salon will debut abroad, in September, in a new mall in Dubai’s Palm Jumeirah.
Kemon, the Umbria, Italy-based hair-care company that is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year, was showcasing the Velian Complex, whose ingredients were culled from the company’s Open Lab. That’s 20 hectares of land next to Kemon’s factory that in 2006 were converted into an organic farm to grow medicinal and native plants. The complex includes a blend of mullein, helichrysum, flax and dyer’s chamomile for its anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, antioxidant and soothing benefits.
The Valian Complex was combined with aloe vera leaf juice for the formula of the newly launched organic professional hair-care line Actyvabio, which contains up to 97 percent ingredients of natural origin, is certified Cosmo Organic and contained in recycled and recyclable packaging.
The complex was also added to the Yo Color System colorant treatment, which has ammonia-free formulas.
Insight, the Bologna-based professional brand formulated with green chemistry and containing a large percentage of organic ingredients, last year restyled its product range, which includes hair, with more than 70 references; skin, with five products, and men’s care, with five products. Recycled PET plastic is used for the entire line, save for the tubes, which are realized from sugar cane. The brand hopes to enter the U.S. soon and to launch e-commerce.
At Cosmoprof Worldwide Bologna this session, there were a total of 265,000 attendees, a number practically flat year-on-year, and with a 10 percent rise of people coming from outside of Italy. There were just over 3,000 exhibitors from more than 70 countries.
In related news, Gianpiero Calzolari, president of the fair’s organizer BolognaFiere, said in a statement that Cosmoprof, already in Las Vegas; Mumba; Bologna, and Hong Kong, will increase its global footprint with an expansion into Asia and Africa with “new projects being defined for 2020.”
“The Cosmoprof platform will get more and more , to better respond to the needs of this industry’s companies,” he explained.
Further geographic developments, especially in Europe, will be bolstered by BolognaFiere’s acquisition last August of the German media company Health and Beauty, which publishes 30 beauty-related trade magazines and operates Beauty Forum trade shows in 14 countries.
Source: Read Full Article