The Glass Polymer is moulded with very thick walls while maintaining perfect transparency and contributing to the visual efficiency of the Lancome packaging design.

The Lancôme Laboratories has selected The Glass Polymer, a high-end packaging material from Eastman Chemical the world’s largest producer of PET polymers for packaging, for the injection-moulded packaging for its new skincare product, Secret de Vie* The Glass Polymer features a unique combination of wide-ranging performance properties, including gloss, absolute colourless crystal transparency, chemical resistance and ultrasonic weldability. The packaging is produced by French converter Auriplast.

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“Secret de Vie”, one of the latest creations by the Lancome Laboratories, is a facecare cream product formulated by the well-known French cosmetologist in order to “inject new life” into ageing skin cells. Secret de Vie is an outstanding, Lancome-exclusive treatment designed to act on six major types of skin cells*, freeing the skin of fatigue, smoothing it, evening it out and firming it. An innovative, never seen before, packaging concept was therefore an absolute requisite to suitably display this cosmetologic innovation to the women of the world.

A perfectly shaped, transparent sphere, with a touch of the mystery of life itself, is the brilliant result achieved by Lancome Laboratories with the help of The Glass Polymer from Eastman.

Comprising two half-spheres, forming a bottom and lid screwed assembly, the Secret de Vie cream jar is injection-moulded in Glass Polymer DN011, exhibiting the unique combination of properties required to meet the performance criteria of the packaging.

“Lancôme’s specifications were highly-demanding for this packaging which has been designed with the greatest of care in terms of style and aesthetics”, says Ludovic Gardet, application development manager cosmetic & personal care packaging for Eastman Chemical in Europe.

“As the packaging material is in direct contact with the cream product, it had to be chemically inert”, explains Thierry Ramboz, skincare products packaging manager for Lancome. “Ultrasonic weldability was another must-be requirement for assembling the jacket-type structure of the container; added to this, the design of the container called for a material with a high-gloss, to be totally colourless like glass and with the possibility of very thick-walled moulding. Eastman’s Glass Polymer DN011 meets perfectly with this set of criteria."

Both half-spheres are injection-moulded in Glass Polymer using hot runner technology. Each half-sphere is a double-wall structure assembled by ultrasonic welding. The double-wall is achieved by an inner, lacquered shell that is inserted into a transparent counterpart with very high wall thickness. This unique structure design translates into a particularly effective optical effect, whereby the inner sphere seems to levitate inside the outer one. The ability of The Glass Polymer to be moulded with very thick walls while maintaining perfect transparency is a major contributor to the visual efficiency of the packaging design. Combined with the heavy weight feel that is another specific property of The Glass Polymer, the property spectrum of the material provides an object that feels heavy in hand, is highly esthetical and conveys a sense of exclusive luxury, all contributing to a powerful consumer appeal. Compared with such competitive materials as PMMA and styrenics, The Glass Polymer provides better fatigue-stress resistance, which is a critical property, for example, for the durability of the threaded parts at the interface of the container’s bottom and lid sections.

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