The copolyester is thought to be a breakthrough resin offering a thick-walled alternative to glass without having to sacrifice clarity and chemical resistance for design freedom.
"It used to be that cosmetic brand owners who wanted to design a transparent bottle had few alternatives for the material selection," said Vincent Gugumus, global market development manager, cosmetics packaging, Eastman. "Most plastic material alternatives solved some of these needs, but with severe limitations for the design's wall thickness. This copolyester is specifically developed for extrusion blow moulding thick-walled material, without sacrificing qualities such as water-clear clarity, excellent chemical resistance and ease of processing, and therefore, it creates new possibilities for cosmetic packaging design."
Eastman claims that the Eastar Copolyester EB062 has a look and feel close to glass, yet is lighter and is even more resistant to breakage than other conventional plastic material alternatives. It also allows for the production of complex and sophisticated shapes.
All this means that the product offers toughness and shatter-resistance while enabling high light transmission rates - above 90 percent - when the material is converted into a container.
Eastman says that for the brand owner, the product and technology could help attract consumers with new designs that would have either been impossible before or more expensive to produce with glass or other plastics materials.
Copolyester's have been increasingly used for cosmetics packaing in recent years, and Eastman has been one of the main driving forces behind its international adoption. Two years ago the company launched DN011, an injection moulded grade for polymers that brought about clearer copolymers and last year the company also launched two new colpolymer aimed directly at the cosmetics industry.