3D Neopac Wins IFCA Star Award for SpringTube®
With benefits for consumers, brand owners and manufacturers, turnkey solution combines ease of adoption, shelf appeal and versatility.
Mumbai, India – 3D Neopac, a global provider of tube packaging for cosmetics and health care, has won a Star Award from the Indian Flexible Packaging & Folding Carton Manufacturers Association (IFCA) for a customer project involving its SpringTube® solution. Specially designed to maintain its shape while delivering a host of additional benefits for consumers, brand owners and manufacturers, the tube was utilized by Nykaa for its Wanderlust line of scented body scrubs.
Featuring a push-on PP flip-top cap, the printer-friendly SpringTube™ can be decorated via digital, flexo or coldfoil processes. For product protection, an ethylene vinyl alcohol (EVOH) barrier preserves oxygen-sensitive formulas, and helps extend the shelf life of beauty and personal care products.
For Nykaa, 3D Neopac’s solution comprised a tube 40mm in diameter with a 25-micron EVOH barrier. The tubes are printed through a hybrid flexo-digital process in which a single vignette is flexo-printed onto a transparent tube – giving the illusion of a colored substrate – then combined with high-resolution digital images showcasing the specific product variety (i.e. Strawberry Daiquiri). Gold-colored foil helps complete the eye-catching look.
In addition to exemplary aesthetics, SpringTube™ also offers sustainability potential. Brand owners utilizing the solutions can incorporate lower thickness films (down to 300 microns), and mono-material structures also are possible. Kraft paper materials are another EcoDesign option.
Available in fill volumes from 40-275ml, 3D Neopac’s SpringTube™ offers differentiating benefits to multiple stakeholders, including:
Manufacturers – SpringTube™ is flat extruded with an EVOH barrier for longer shelf life, and accurate thickness control guarantees smooth processing and dimensional stability. 3D Neopac extrudes and direct prints the solution’s substrate, and mounts the tube’s shoulder and cap – an inhouse, turnkey production process lending itself to efficiency.
Consumers – Since the SpringTube’s unique composition maintains the tube’s shape during use, the solution shows well both on shelves and, in forums such as online demos, on camera. The tube’s easy-open caps, which also are available with a tamper-evident sleeve feature, provide additional safety and user-friendliness. In addition, individualized coding can be applied to each tube for consumer participation in competitions, local events, special rebates or collector series.
Brand owners – Featuring superior graphics and aesthetics compared to tubes decorated with lithographic labels or offset colors, the direct-to-print SpringTube™ offers brand owners an array of customizable design options like digital print, flexo print and metallic foiling – all in a seamless 360° degree look. SpringTube™ can feature colored or metalized caps and offers high flexibility properties to replace existing label tubes. SpringTube™ can be individualized down to the unit level by variable data printing, allowing brands to create on-package marketing activities such as sales promotions, competitions, collectables or games.
“As our work with valued customers like Nykaa shows, SpringTube offers a welcome combination of user-friendliness, versatility and unique design options,” says Anant Gadre, Managing Director at 3D Neopac India. “Such innovation further demonstrates 3D Neopac’s commitment to best serving the needs of local and international customers as well as other stakeholders throughout the product lifespan.”