Cosmetics and beauty packaging

Five things to consider when choosing paperboard

Here are five things to keep in mind when picking the right paperboard for your perfumes or other beauty products:

1. How it looks

The design of the packaging plays a crucial role in attracting customers. You want to invest in visually appealing packaging that stands out on the shelves and creates a memorable unboxing experience. And you want the freedom to design and embellish as you see fit. When selecting a paperboard, ensure it’s suitable for embellishments such as embossing, foiling, debossing, and other similar techniques.

The white shade of the paperboard is also essential, as it impacts how the colours of your artwork or design are represented.

2. What it should do

You want your luxury cosmetic packaging to be visually stunning, but it also must be functional and practical. Easy to open, use, and dispense. And you want to avoid excessive packaging that may frustrate customers.

Select the packaging size and shape that best accommodates your product. Avoid oversized packaging as it may increase shipping costs and generate more waste.

3. How it's manufactured

The best paperboard packaging for cosmetics requires the right raw material and a precise production process.

For example, cosmetics packaging requires a flat, stable, dust-free paperboard. It must also have good absorption and drying properties, as moisture in the surrounding air can cause upward or downward curl and twist in the sheet, affecting the shape of the paperboard.

If you compromise on raw materials and manufacturing, you expose yourself to risk. Inferior paperboard can cause printing stoppages or limit what you can create with it. You almost always get stability problems, meaning your premium products look floppy on the shelves.

Sub-standard paperboard can cause other problems as well. For example, when you’re developing luxury cosmetic packaging designs, you don’t want your creativity to be restricted by the quality of the paperboard. It’s important to consider raw materials and manufacturing when making decisions.

4. How sustainable is it

Sustainable cosmetic packaging is becoming ever more important. Consumers are increasingly considering the sustainability of a product, including its packaging. And regulatory changes are creating new demands.

To meet these demands, many cosmetics brands are setting ambitious targets. This is a significant development, but it must cover many decisions. The raw material must come from sustainably managed forests. The energy used during manufacturing must be renewable. The finished product must be easy to recycle. Or decompose quickly if it ends up in nature. One example of a different type of target is the replacement of fossil-based packaging materials with biobased alternatives.

5. How it fits into your strategic supply chain

When you decide on paperboard for cosmetic packaging, you must ensure it will work within your total supply chain. That covers every step from manufacturing and transportation to warehousing and points of sale.

Today, premium brands invest considerable effort in building data and analytics capabilities, ensuring they have the right resources and proper program management in place to maintain a comprehensive supply chain, both at the regional and global levels. That way, they can ensure that paperboard containers for cosmetics are available where needed, from printing and packaging to reaching end consumers.