Bormioli Luigi is a family-owned company developing and manufacturing premium glass packaging solutions for fragrance, skincare and makeup—from lightweight glass to sustainable decoration techniques such as sputtering, which looks like metallization. The company is investing heavily in the Americas to respond to demand, with everything from raw materials to decoration.
Here, Simone Baratta, Director of the Beauty Division at Bormioli Luigi, gives Beauty Packaging’s Jamie Matusow an overview.
A Q&A with Bormioli Luigi's Simone Baratta
Jamie Matusow: Can you tell us about Bormioli Luigi’s premium packaging solutions?Simone Baratta: Considered as a leading glassmaker in Europe, Bormioli Luigi is a family-owned company developing and manufacturing premium packaging solutions for fragrance, skincare and makeup. Today, the group is continuing to invest in flexible, innovative packaging.
Its ambition is to be an industry reference and a partner to its customers, championing the historic virtues of glass and the development of the industry while fundamentally respecting humans and their environment. We ceaselessly invest in upgrading our industrial equipment, as witnessed by our leadership in electric furnaces.
In recent years, Bormioli Luigi has chosen to dedicate a significant part of its innovation capacity to decorating. We are also deeply committed to customer service and accompanying our clients, which is essential to our reputation, and to the quality of our glass, which is said to be the most beautiful in the world.
For this latest Victoria’s Secret creation, a graceful glass shape.
JM: How do you differentiate yourselves on the market?
SB: Our company stands out for its industrial excellence, the technicality of its processes and its capacity for creating designs with unique glass shapes. The group has also developed a ready-to-go product offer that can easily be personalized thanks to decorating.
Within this ready-to-go offer, the ecoLine collection in lightweight glass stands out for the versatility of its offer, combining bottles and jars—including refillable solutions—designed for fragrance and skincare. We also offer an innovative glass makeup line and an all-glass refillable jar available with bio-sourced caps.
JM: What added value do you offer when it comes to decorating?
SB: Our in-house decoration workshops are true innovation centers in which we develop new, state-of-the-art solutions like our Inside signature, an internal lacquer, which brands love.
Concerned about the environmental impact and end-of-life of our products, we are innovating with more sustainable decoration techniques like sputtering, which looks like metallization, but allows us to control application and achieve the transparency necessary for optical sorting during recycling.
In addition, we offer varnishes and lacquers destined to protect bottles and jars from shocks or from UV light, perfect for natural—and thereby fragile—formulas, and for on-the-go or large formats, which are often more subject to damage.
JM: How do you respond to demand from markets in the Americas?
SB: Beyond the made-to-measure development of exclusive, ultra-premium glass shapes, we anticipate the expectations of emerging brands for accessible products with a strong visual identity. For this, the designs in our ready-to-go offer allow the development of limited editions or launches with multiple references in a short timeframe. Both technical and innovative, their esthetic added value resides in their designs and formats.
It is then the decoration that creates the ‘wow’ effect consumers are looking for. The choice of printing and finishing acts as a brand identifier. The slightest change of color is sufficient to create differentiation. As such, our group is able to react to the need for instant solutions in line with the TikTok trend and the expectations of new generations of consumers. This caters to new markets and new distribution channels.
JM: How can you supply the American market from Europe?
SB: Our presence in the Americas is not recent. Nevertheless, our group is developing a more rational proximity model there. We are investing in industrial structures and local logistics platforms to be closer to local markets. We are developing partnerships with industrial players throughout the value chain, from raw materials to decoration.
We intend to serve these markets through local commercial, industrial and logistics capabilities. This move, backed by local teams, allows us to maintain the same levels of service, to replicate our European expertise and to pursue our innovation work in harmony with American culture.
JM: What are the challenges you will face tomorrow?
SB: Since its creation, Bormioli Luigi group has never stopped innovating. A pioneer in electric fusion, it is also leading important decarbonization projects based on efficiency and reducing carbon dioxide emissions from its furnaces, as well as working on energy management, the introduction of PCR glass and recyclability.
Our production facilities are developing industrial processes designed for ever more flexible developments of products that create a consumer experience. We are recruiting talent with new skills and training our teams to advance together toward tomorrow’s technologies, like robotic assistance for machine operators or artificial intelligence as a means to improve the agility of processes and digitalized quality control.
And of course, we remain true to our sustainable DNA. Our mission is to design the glass of the future, glass that is both desirable and sustainable.
