Caps & closures have covered a long distance from a general metallic cap to a valve dispensing closure. Apart from adding safety of the package, an innovative cap enhances the appeal of a package and convenience of use. Today the busy and time-conscious consumers demand convenience favoring flexible lids and dispensing closures that are easy to open & close. These days the demand of single serve plastic beverage bottles have come up considering the consumers who carry beverages while traveling. Others in demand are cosmetic & personal care products. The food packaging have seen dispensing closures as a rising trend. Changes in caps and closure types can be seen in cosmetic sector as well.

Serving the purpose
The designs of caps & closures vary according to the applications in various sectors, such as pharma, cosmetics, food, beverage, etc. The carbonated soft drinks (CSD) products closures have to guarantee a good CO2 retention capacity. The characteristics of a good closure is that it should protect its contents from being counterfeited. A good closure ensures the brand of the product and protect the customer, such that no one should be able to open a package and break the tamper evident band and refill the bottle. The caps & closure market is explicitly divided into two major categories, standardized and customized caps & closures. Some beverages like CSD, mineral water and beer need standardized caps made of materials meeting requirements such as easy processing, ease of opening, good performance on the filling line and containment of the product. While the customized closures are used in a number of applications such as personal care products, industrial products, liquid foods and beverages.

Plastics: The leading material

At a time, containers and lids were only made of metal and glass. But now plastics rule. It is evident from the fact that products like sauces, pickles, olives, which mainly depend on metal caps for packaging are shifting largely to plastics. Industry estimates clearly show that plastic caps and closures will continue to deliver more than average annual profits through 2012. The technological improvements have enabled plastic enclosures to replace metal closures on glass containers. The trend for plastic closures continues to grow as new applications for them continues to come, ranging from wine and beer to hot-fill foods like sauces and pickles.


Economy affecting the development

The current global economy scenario is going through a difficult time that is pushing every industry to come to the basics and reduce cost involved at every stage. Markets facing economic slowdown are likely to face lower consumption, which will hit further hit developments in these markets. In spite of that people will continue consuming products packed in plastics and capped with a closure. The manufacturers will be under a cost pressure for the development of lightweight closure. Their focus will be only on reducing costs, water usage and energy, while still offering a cap fulfilling all the needs.

Looking towards the future
Despite the current market scenario, that is not helping the expansion and diversification of these products, some sectors are likely to give thrust to the caps and closures market. The transition from metallic to plastic caps & closures have provided new dimensions to innovations in designing caps & closures. Pharma industry that is still using a lot of glass packaging but gradually shifting to PET bottles will provide a good opportunity for plastic closures. The other factor that can create demand for them is the wide acceptance of organized retail formats where shelf appeal of the products on display is becoming crucial. It would create demand for new, designer & trendy caps & closures along with bottles and plastic containers.