Shops, big supermarkets, pharmacies, multi-brand shopping centres are the showcase where daily different product packages are displayed and have to win customers. Packaging reinforces the message conveyed by the brand and helps the product gaining its market share: the container has not only a practical function but conveys also a complete aesthetic experience. The research for suitable shapes and materials is aimed to excite the senses of final customers and get them emotionally involved. Research for new packaging solutions concerns new shapes, colours, scents and materials and is getting more and more a key factor to success in a market full of similar products.

Among the new packaging solutions created by Bormioli Rocco we list "active and smart packages", additives able to improve the performance of container and colourings. The application range is wide, from the cosmetic and food markets, to the pharmaceutical sector. With the term "active" we mean that packages extend the shelf life of the product or improve the conditions of the products once in the container. Bormioli Rocco produce a wide range of bottles and closures, which results from an ongoing research aimed at "active packaging" development. To this category belong, for example, bottles produced in PET PASSIVE AND ACTIVE BARRIER, materials of which we have exclusive use for the European pharmaceutical market. This treatment guarantees, as well as a good transparency and a passive barrier, even an active barrier against oxygen which is activated only when the container is filled with liquid, thus in the filling stage. This material shows interesting results as far as the product shelf life is concerned; as a consequence, it can be a good solution for parapharmaceutical products such as vitamin and mineral supplements.

But the innovative drive of Bormioli Rocco reaches far beyond this. We are able to assist the client in developing scented packaging. In fact, thanks to the scents specifically selected and mixed with the polymeric matrix during the production process, the packaging can release the scented substances inwards or outwards. In the first case the scent can be released while opening the packaging in order to intensify the scent of the product or the packaging material can release the scent gradually once the product is open to counterbalance the natural scent loss of a long shelf life. In the latter case the aim is to involve the customer in a sensory experience at the purchasing stage creating a unique bond between customer and product, enabling our products to be chosen among dozens. B.U. Plastics proposes even smarter packaging solutions: containers able to control the conditions of preservation of the product, thanks to the use of additives which change their colours according to temperature changes.

We offer also a wide range of colourings able to meet the most different customers' needs. Depending on the plastic material chosen it is possible to give to surfaces particular chromatic effects, enhance transparency, provide tactile effects, convey opaque shades, give the texture a delicate pearl-like reflection or iridescent effects. We propose also an ultimate generation of additives created for plastic material, able to give packages a higher protection barrier against UV rays or humidity.

The quality of a product and its uniqueness is also based on the additives and their potential, still all to explore, can turn packaging into an instrument of brand communication and into a success for the product.