Flacons decorated using modern techniques

Your client‘s wishes embedded in glass

Andreas Herzog of Stölzle explains how glass as a packaging material can be even more effective with the help of modern decoration techniques.

Features such as brilliance, a rich variety of facets, and elegance, still make glass a strong favourite for the packaging of skin care products and perfumes. In addition it has the advantage of being inert and does not react with the contents of a glass container. A further plus point is its recyclability.

With cosmetic products and perfumes it is important to meet the highest demands of aesthetics. High class glass packaging carries with it emotion, imagery and exclusivity. Bottles, flacons and jars can be designed exactly in line with the client’s wishes and decorated using the most up-to-date techniques.

One-stop shopping much in demand

The Stölzle Glass Group has three decoration plants where traditional methods such as screen printing, hot foil stamping or acid etching, are used, and have now added some innovative solutions. For instance in the Stoelzle Masnières prestige plant in France Stölzle has set up a digital, print system which allows to print almost any design or pattern on the widest variety of bottle shapes and sizes without the graphic sample being compromised. Furthermore this technique has the advantage of saving time and money because no further heat treatment is needed after printing.

Unique effects can also be achieved using special inks or lacquers which will, fluoresce, or change their appearance and colour, depending on the room temperature or the angle from which the product is observed.

In addition to all of this, lacquering and printing are these days more often being cured by UV light. This means that the producer can cease being concerned about the use of inks containing heavy metal, and once again this is a good thing for the environment, as well as speeding up the decoration process and ultimately helping to save costs.

As a trend fluorescent printing is becoming more and more popular as it brings products and decoration to glow in the dark. An example of this was Azzarro with their London Club. When dancing through the night in the 1970s the clients could sees the pitch black bottle black bottle, with the brands name glowing in the dark.

And the latest addition to Stölzle’s new developments, that is also proving popular in the decoration business, is the use of high gloss lacquering to achieve a fake metallic effect, and a lot cheaper and faster than the traditional metal coating process.

Unique in the world is the IPET technology used in the Stoelzle Masnières plant. The glass flacons are decorated right in the production line and exhibit an unmistakable pearlised shimmer which underlines the brilliance of the glass and leaves it quite suitable for further decorative processes such as lacquering or hot foil stamping.

Andreas Herzog, head of decoration Stölzle Glass Group, Köflach, Austria