CFT: a market avid for innovation

These preferred finishes, however, limited the creativity in the marketing and product development areas. Within the glass industry were found colored containers that, although attractive, were expensive, due to the limited volumes required and the costs that they implicated.

The necessity to depart from the conventional brought heavy pressure on the industry to satisfy the market needs that was becoming avid for new innovation.

This is how the age of paint decoration surged, a finish that was attractive and that unleashed a wave of creativity which began to demand colors in glass containers previously unable to duplicate. This is where a great variety of colors with different tones begin to appear that, combined with silkscreen, brought on a whole new era in product development.

Under the heading of “painted” it’s worth pointing out the diverse variations for this process such as liquid paint which allows seeing the container’s contents, and electrostatic painting that, different from liquid paint, uses an application process based on powdered paint.

In the “painting” era we see develop a wide variety of innovations to the process that increase the average price of the cosmetic container such as the application of two and up to three different colors on the same container, in addition to the silkscreen or softened painting or just a single application in the background.

This stage of the painting process currently is in vogue and is one of the most preferred finishes by the cosmetic industry, due to the fact that the application highlights the product’s image.

Within the same period as painted finishes on glass we find the emergence of “hot stamping” on glass. This process was already being used on other materials and products but not on glass and it was not until some time after successfully being tested on other materials that tests were conducted on glass containers.

This type of process allows for metallic gold and silver silk-screening finishes with a high degree of brightness and a texture that stands out to the touch and eye sight. This finishing process has revolutionized product image within the marketing areas in the industry and products begin to emerge with more elegance through the use of this process.

More recently even newer finishing processes begin to emerge that seek innovation in the silkscreen process which has begun to show signs of growing old.

We will analyze these newer finishes in another article.

Pablo Fernández Benítez
CFT Marketing Manager, Vitro
pfernandezb@vitro.com

Note: This article was published in the Packaging Emphasis magazine in its January-February 2010 edition and is available at the following link:
http://www.packaging.enfasis.com/notas/15510-evolucion-del-acabado-vidrio