apart from the lower costs to tube customers, according to barry, asia also offers a lot of things. barry said that in extruded plastic tubes, departure times from asia are generally shorter as compared to the domestic lead times. he further added that they are less concentrated on innovation and pay more attention on superior customer satisfaction. local suppliers are quick to make their customers understand that cheap goods doesn&39t always mean better. there can be legal issues with the quality of tubes that are manufactured overseas, in comparison to those made domestically. due to the quality reasons, they have had to return two separate shipments from china. the resins used were not clean enough and recycled. these resins were not capable to be able to be sealed. though this may not be the case always, however, white warns customers that a small amount saved on the price of tubes may result in spending a lot of timemoney over the period of time. tube fillers are also facing the challenges one of the main concerns influencing tube fillers has been the shift from embossed lot and expiration information to the imprinting of this information straight on the tube. traditionally, this expiry information has been embossed in the tube seal area. however, as it is embossed, it can be hard to understand, noted bernie conlon, who is the director of sales and marketing at iwka pack systems inc., based in fairfield, nj. many manufacturers of cosmetic products are talking over the substitutes such as imprinting this data on the body of the tube with either an ink jet printer or a laser. as an area requires to be prepared to get the printed characters, this has an understandable effect on the artwork. a byproduct of this is the fact that one time you print something you will require a vision system to validate that all the characters were printed and clear. in simple words, it means that filling machines will require to be retrofitted with cameras and printers. this requires more setup time and possibly cluttering up the mechanism. intensifying diameters of cosmetic tubes up from 52mm, now at 60mm may also pose concerns for existing filling equipment, as per conlon. he mentioned that the current machines may not be capable of handling this size without a retrofit. recently created mechanism will require handling this larger volume as a standard. equipped with a competent use of servo technology, tfs 801 tube filler, iwka&39s compact new model, runs up to 100 tubes at the speed of per minute with one filling nozzle, and flexibly allows tubes up to 60mm in diameter as per the information given by the company. on the business point of view, tube fillers have experienced consolidations of ongoing business. they have seen big players get bigger and small guys close their entrances," mentioned the filling station&39s white. the majority of new machinery is being offered to the end user of large quantities unilever, p&g, etc.. demand for personal care and cosmetic tubes is more and much of the modernism revolves around graphics. while speaking about the decorative embellishments, just on anything goes, as long it assists to catch the eye, mentioned chris barry, who is communications manager at the tube council, located in naperville, il. beautybank, which is based in ny, the newest sector of the estée lauder companies, introduced three innovative skin care and cosmetic brands available absolutely at kohl&39s department stores american beauty, good skin and flirt. alcan packaging beauty cebal based in norwalk, ct, provided most of the tubes for all three sectors, as per the information given by kris christensen, the director of marketing for the tube producer. he further mentioned that the good skin line featured many oval shaped tubes which have screwon caps, offset gloss coating and printing, in 200ml and50ml, while the american beauty line incorporates a silverline laminate tube which offset flip top cap and printing. this line also utilized many plastic tubes which have pastel pearl finishes, decorated with hot stamp and silkscreen, and cebalcaps with shrink band. christensen said that this was a chief undertaking as the timeline was extremely tight and there were various sku&39s about 30 different items. these introduction of products also included laminate tubes, oval tubes, and plastic tubes with different degrees of decoration, some of which included hot stamp and silkscreen. in the last year, alcan launched two oriented flip top cap styles named as meridian and regal, and a flip top cap for its 40mm oval shaped tube. personal care laminate tubes are one more area of interest for alcan. christensen mentioned that they have created an imprinted laminate tube that gives a palpable effect on the laminate surface. to give their tube an exclusive identity, their customers can draw the pattern of their own choice. source of information httpwww.happi.comcontentsviewfeatures20051111powerfulnewpackaging
