Stable Ingredients, Thoughtful Packaging: Exploring Cosmetic Inner Packaging

Plastic bottle

Plastic bottles are made of various materials, including ABS (acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene), PP (polypropylene), PE (polyethylene), PET (polyethylene terephthalate), AS (styrene-acrylonitrile copolymer), acrylic, etc. Among them, PP, PE, and PET are environmentally friendly materials that can be directly in contact with the contents. PP and PE are translucent, with a white color, and can be manufactured in various hardness levels. PET is transparent, lightweight, and has a soft texture.

Glass bottle

Glass bottles in cosmetics are mainly used for products with smaller volumes such as creams, pastes, lotions, serums, and essential oils. Based on the type of bottle opening, glass bottles can be categorized into wide-mouth bottles and narrow-mouth bottles. Wide-mouth bottles are mostly used for solid paste cosmetics like facial creams and applied masks, while narrow-mouth bottles are generally used for water-based and lotion-type cosmetics.

Glass bottles are typically paired with caps, pumps, or used with droppers to better ensure product cleanliness and hygiene. The bottle body can undergo treatments such as frosting, spraying, or screen printing.

Glass bottles have the advantage of low cost, but the disadvantages of being heavy and easily breakable. Perfume products often use glass bottles to better prevent liquid evaporation and preserve the fragrance.

Plastic Hose

Hoses are classified by the number of layers into single-layer, double-layer, and five-layer types; by material, they can be divided into plastic and metal hoses, among which plastic hoses are the most common—typically used for packaging regular facial cleansers and usually made of PE plastic.

Tube packaging offers excellent sealing performance, effectively isolating the contents from external air while preventing leakage. The barrier properties of tubes vary depending on the number of layers. Tubes are typically paired with screw caps or flip caps, and the tube body can undergo various finishing processes such as silk-screen printing.

Cosmetic brands focusing on functional ingredients often use dark glass bottles for packaging to ensure the efficacy of the ingredients.

It should be noted that although amber glass bottles are used to protect against light, their selection may also be purely based on tradition or aesthetic considerations. Some cosmetic products do not contain light-sensitive ingredients; however, brands may still adopt amber glass bottles and dropper dispensers—drawing on their traditional use in pharmaceuticals—to appeal to consumers.

Dark glass bottles, although they have good light-blocking properties, can only completely isolate air before use and are not suitable for components that require higher air isolation (such as ubiquinone and ascorbic acid used for antioxidation), and easily oxidized oil components (such as shea butter).

If the product components require higher sealing performance of the packaging, a vacuum pump can be used. The vacuum pump is generally made of AS material, which has the significant advantage of effectively isolating the contents from the outside air. There is a piston at the bottom of the vacuum pump bottle. When the pump head is pressed, the piston at the bottom moves upward, the contents flow out, the space inside the bottle decreases, and air does not enter.

Since vacuum pumps are made of plastic, their light-blocking capability is suboptimal. For products whose ingredients have high requirements for both light protection and air isolation—such as retinol-based substances—metal tubes must be used. High-concentration retinol products are typically packaged in aluminum tubes, which offer superior sealing performance compared to plastic and effectively block light and moisture, thereby better preserving the active ingredients’ stability.