Roland Baranes, CEO of the Baralan Group, is a rather discreet man. Probably a quality to run this Italian company created in 1962, which has gradually and consistently risen as one of the world leaders in the design and production of a comprehensive range of glass and plastic bottles and jars with all their accessories, as well as a source of plastic containers for the beauty market serving the segments of skincare, perfume and makeup, with nail polish, which represents an important share of the company’s activity.

The Group, which achieved €45 million in sales this year, intends to take advantage of its assets to accentuate its offensive strategy in all other areas of beauty.

CEO Roland Baranes tells us more.

Jean-Yves Bourgeois: You are not just a designer and distributor of packaging for the Beauty sector, you are also a producer.

Roland Baranes: Absolutely! What people often don’t know about us is that we have a plastic injection unit, Labor Plast, that makes closures, plastic containers, and a finishing unit, Gloss Tech. Furthermore, all our products are designed and made by our creative teams and the molds belong to us. Our engineers manage all stages from development to production including quality control performed on each site.

We are specialized in small and medium quantities and thanks to our high availability, we stand as the perfect support for start-ups, but also as an important financial and logistics support for our customers. We fully rely on our versatility and adaptability. We have a comprehensive range of standard items, which doesn’t mean we don’t also offer customized products.

Apart from nail polish, our offer also encompasses the skincare, color cosmetic and perfume sectors, thanks to our extensive range of standard products. We regularly invest to enrich and diversify this range. All glass or plastic made products can be personalized with the most sophisticated decoration techniques.

One of our strengths is the availability of products in our warehouses located in different parts of the world. However, we are also intensifying our investments and capabilities to develop exclusive projects, often combined with existing standard products to help our customers with the investment in sustainability.

Collaboration, passion, quality, efficiency and innovation are our watchwords with clear objectives: on the one hand, offer the market a range of high-quality products in line with environmental and social concerns, and on the other, establish lasting partnerships with both our customers and our own supply channels and finally, create favorable working conditions for and with all our employees.

Bourgeois: What is your insight for the coming years?

Baranes: We must clearly increase our foothold in all segments of Beauty packaging and thus re-balance our markets in order to rely less on nail polish which, as everyone knows, is a “roller coaster” market. And our assets are many. As you know we also have operations in other countries and distribute our products in more than 60 countries. Physically present in the United States since 1980 (New York, California and Florida), we have even opened our company in Shanghai in 2011 recently enhanced with its own warehouse. This international presence is very important because nothing will replace a face to face and direct contact with our customers to serve and support them.

We take our commitments to the beauty packaging market very seriously and invest our resources in order to be as close as possible to our customers. A strong presence on various trade shows throughout the world also allows us to capture an increasingly important audience. Another advantage is to have our own production tools dedicated to plastic injection and decoration of which I have mentioned before.

Founded in 1977, Labor Plast is a unit of the Group equipped with state-of-the-art injection molding technologies that ensures the supply of most of our plastic components. Bi-injection and finishing operations are also performed there. As for Gloss Tech, also a Group company, it specializes in the varnishing of glass and plastic components as well as metallization.

Bourgeois: So your activities are not all centered on nail polish!

Baranes: We also focus a lot on the niche areas of skincare, perfume, essential oils, makeup and roll-ons. As a matter of fact, we have long been the champions of full service in packaging in all these areas. We can supply quantities ranging from 5,000 pieces to “our highest producible quantities.” Almost 40% of our turnover is invested in readily available products stored in Italy, the United States and China. And our assets are hinged on strong concepts like innovation, design and uniqueness, but also on style, passion and, above all, quality.