Cosmetic Tubes Europe

Switpack which is part of the Swit Group of companies with it's head office's located in Warsaw Poland have recently relocated it's Cosmetic Tube Manufacturing to make way for expansion plans in 2012.

Switpack offers Polyethylene Tubes ranging from 19mm - 50mm diameter. Whilst the rest of Europe has recently been struggling with the well documented problems of the Euro Zone Poland and it's manufacturing base has been largely unaffected. This has resulted in an increase in interest for Polish manufacturing and in particular cosmetic tubes, caps and closures.

Switpack currently offers 6 colour offset printing and new for 2012 "add a splash of colour" tube labeling solutions. This range will expand to digital printing on tubes and laminates.

Cosmetic Tubes Adult Product Business

It seams that the Sex business is recession proof well at least for the producers of cosmetic tubes. Factories are reporting increase in sales partly driven by the demand in the adult product market.

Lubes, gels, lotions and potions are been crammed into tubes ready for the hungry consumer market.

Antibacterial Hand Gel - Now in Tubes

The increase in demand of Antibacterial Hand gel has seen the cosmetic tube come into it's own in recent months.

Tube packaging is perfect for the Hand Gel. The smaller tubes fit perfectly into the jacket pockets and small bags while the larger 75ml Tubes are the perfect travelling companion to take on holiday with you.

With no let up in the amount of swine flu case being reported on a daily bases production of this product looks like it will continue to rise. If you are looking for a cosmetic tube manufacturer for your Antibacterial Hand gel then your private label has a low cost solution for both the tubes and the gels.

Dealing with Cosmetic Tube Supplier

Once you have found a few tube suppliers the next thing is to start contacting them.

The more information that you can give the supplier the better. Basiclly the manufacturer or supplier will need the amount of cosmetic tubes you are interested in, the type and size of tube, type of printing ( screen printing, offset printing, hot stamping, colour of the foil etc), type of cap. The more information that you can give the better.

Basiclly the cosmetic tube supplier wants your business and so will want to give you the best price possible. When they have enough information then they will be able to give the the best price of the tubes. The more tubes that you buy the cheaper the price should be.

The problems that suppliers sometimes have is knowing what price to give you or what your yearly export targets are. For example if you are currently buying 1,000,000 tubes per year from your existing business partners and send an email asking "how much your tubes are" the supplier does not know that you are ordering a reasonable about of Tubes so will more than likely just quote you there book price. It amazes me how many emails people still get like this and not only for the tube industry.

Also it is reccomended to be transparent. Price will always be a factor but also long term co-operation, logistics hassel free ordering and delivery all play a part. So tell your new found suppliers what your objective is. If you are looking at reducing your current Tube production bill then tell them and give a hint of your target price. You goal is to get the best possible price for your tubes and as long as the supplier can win too then it is possible to to achieve both objectives.

If you still don't get results you can always go back and find tube suppliers and start the progress all over.

Search Cosmetic Tube Supplier

Because of the internet, sourcing products like commetic tubes and suppliers, has never been easier..... Sourcing high quality suppliers is quite a different matter.

Search Engines
But where to start looking on the internet. Google is a great place to start but take a look if you search for Tubes for cosmetics there are over 3,000,000 results ( correct at the time of this post ).

Not everyone has the time to wade through 3 million results of industry related sourcing. So as a guide line it is always worth exploring the first first page starting with the number one spot and working down the list.

Online Trade directories
The next great place to look for your tube packaging is in the trade directories. These are becoming more an more popular and because of this more and more of them are setting up each fighting for a bit of this growing online market. Bellow is a list of some of the more popular ones that a friend of mine uses to help her source products online for her company.

A little tip she gave me is to also look for more technical names for your products as the manufacturers are sometimes so focused on production that online marketing is not there main priority. So in the example bellow for Alibaba.com you have technical term Polyethylene Tube ( This is what the tube is sometimes made form ) and also Cosmetic Tubes.

Alibaba.com - Polyethylene tubes, Cosmetic Tubes
tradekey.com
esources.co.uk
tradeeasy.com
made-in-china.com

Online Trade Magazines
A lot of the traditional offline trade magazines are also now making an appearance online and creating there own list of directories as additional promotion for there traditional advertisers. Bellow is a small list of online trade magazines. ( Please feel free to add more in the comments )

• Packaging Digest
  Covering machinery, materials, contract packaging, applications, careers, and events.
  www.packagingdigest.com
• Packaging World
  Magazine about packaging supplies services, jobs, design, manufacturers to the packaging industry, and suppliers.
  www.packworld.com
• Packaging Online
  Offering up-to-date news, information, and articles for the packaging industry.
  www.packaging-online.com
• Dotpackaging
  Online version of Packaging Magazine, a resource of the worldwide packaging industry.
  www.dotpackaging.com
• Canadian Packaging
  The magazine of the Canadian packaging industry.
  www.canadianpackaging.com
• Spray Technology & Marketing Magazine
  Published for the aerosol and pump spray packaging industry.
  www.spraytechnology.com

Well this should get you on your way if you have any other great sources feel free to share them in the comments.

Changing the way packaging is sourced - Packaging Manager

Yet another trade directory has come onto the market promising to bring with it the holy grail of sourcing engines. That one stop place where you can find all the companies that you need to find when you need to find them. So what's it all about is it all just hype or does it have a practical place in your list of bookmark, must visit pages, when the the order comes in that "we have to tighten our belts in these difficult times go forth and find me cheaper|better|quicker suppliers".

Off you go checking our results in your favorite search engine only to find most of the first spots are dominated by trade directories. After wading through all this often duplicate copy and 2 hours later you have a short list of potential suppliers.

So who wouldn't welcome a really usefull tool that enables you to find who you need, at the time you need and at the price you need to get the job done. So does it do the job.

After heading over to there site www.packaging-manager.com in I went. Straight away you can tell that someone has put some thought and energy into design and layout of the page.

This usually means that long hours and both programmers, marketers and users had some imput at the result is pleasingly simple. No need to spend lots of time how to figure out the site works just dive striaght in there so I selected Flexible Tubes added then clicked next and onto the the next add and the next add click personal care select on Turkey only to find 1 result. Does that mean that there is only 1 company in the whole of Europe that is can provide Tube flexible> personal care packaging in Europe!!

Off I went again but this time encountered there Sorry page! Error!

This is all beginning to take just a little too much time.

So is it "Changing the way packaging is sourced?" - Well in my humble opinion I think that it could do but it has to be more than just a slick design looking good it has to be practical and usefull and bug free ( I can forgive them the few bugs as you will get that at the launch of a website ) but waht i can not forgive is the missed oppertunity of a really great user interface experience. I don't doubt for a moment that they have a great database and great information needed by people who need to source but if you can not get to that information or it takes too long and if you still have to checkon the search engines just to see if you have missed someone. But don't just take my word for it maybe it will work better for you. I would definatly give it a go and when you have found the company that you are looking for all you have to do is to convince your department that the 347 euro asking price is worth the results that you are going to bring them.

It needs a better way to get the users in front of there quality database some little tweeks maybe using a bit of ajax or a download application, some more intuative simple selections and then and only then could it "change the way packaging is sourced"

The brainchild of’ ‘Packaging Europe’, providers of print-based and on-line information to the European packaging industry, Packaging Manager claims to offer only impartial and objective information – there are no paid-for entries and no advertisements. To build the database on which it operates, more than 400 researchers, speaking 38 languages, contacted all 53,000 companies.

Go and check it out don't forget to come back an let us know how you got on.
www.packaging-manager.com

New cosmetics tube from recycled materials

Cosmetic tubes are going ecco. Manufacturers from around europe are starting to introduce Cometic tubes from recycled materials.

Green materials have been hitting packaging headlines in recent years but the industry has yet to truly embrace them because of functional or aesthetic defaults.

How ever a company in Russia seams to have found a soloution.

Alcan Packaging Beauty claims to have developed a plastic tube made with recycled materials that makes no compromises on quality.

Whilst this is good news for the for the planet don't get over come with joy just yet. In the short term, especially in the current ecconomic slow down, the focus is going to be on getting products out cheaper. Producing the tubes from recycled materials has allways been expensive thus less demand. In the longer term though companies like Alcan Packaging will be able to jump ahead of competitors when we finally come out of the slow down and people start wanting to do there bit to saving the planet. Inaddition as global worming becomes more of an issue with governments the usuall incentives that come with this will encourange a whole lot more manufacturers follow this route.