Eastman supplies glass polymer Cavalli perfume packaging

An Italian company has selected Eastman's glass polymer for the bottle for Just Cavalli, a new Roberto Cavalli fragrance. The transparent bottle is made up from different fully integrated parts: a glass core, a resin shoulder and a protective housing made from Eastar AN014 copolyester.

The new bottle, designed by G Candiani on behalf of ITF (Lodi), combines an apparently minimal design with sophisticated simplicity. At the same time, it contains a high technological content and complexity, said Eastman.

Candiani's amministratore delegato Carlo Candiani explained: "When it came to material choice, the customer allowed us total freedom.

"Key requirement was that we would achieve excellent aesthetical qualities: first of all transparency - together with good mechanical resistance and elasticity. Furthermore it was necessary for the material to be chemically compatible with the perfume itself. Eastman's glass polymer offered all these characteristics," Candiani continued.

He added: "The Just Cavalli perfume bottle is a complex object, consisting of three different materials: glass, a special resin used for the bottle shoulder and the glass polymer, which is used for the external housing to be snapped onto the other materials."

The company's major concern was to identify a suitable material that could perform well with both glass and the other resin. It required a material with good mechanical properties, but also with good elasticity, as the glass tolerances could be pretty varied, with differences of more than 1,5 mm. Also, because of the required production rate and quantities of 40,0000 pieces per week, the Candiani Company decided to run a detailed pre-study.

Carlo Candiani said: "We produced an 8-cavity mould of approximately 600 x 600 mm with a traditional distribution runner. In order to prevent snap-in assembly problems with glass and the special resin, we first optimised the size through resins stereo-prototyping models."

He explained that the company had both the technology and the required tools in-house. Next, a pilot mould with a single cavity was created. Once start-up production issues had been solved, parts could be produced by injection-moulding.