A LIQUID ASSET

Mouthwash is the oral care market's star performer, but innovation tends to be led by product development rather than packaging design.

 

According to RPC Containers designer Dean Williams, mouthwash is presented in the "consumer's concept of how a mouthwash pack should be". That means using a pack with a tried-and-tested history of ergonomics and on-shelf familiarity.

 

"A lot of packaging design is historic," he notes. "Own brands hark back to old classic Listerine bottles of 10 years ago. Brands are quite conservative in packaging design - the innovation is in product design."

 

That means most creativity in packaging is concentrated in the label, and brand owners have instead placed more emphasis on ingredients. Over time this has meant a shift from alcohol-based mouthwashes to alcohol-free and the push toward kids' brands and more advanced formulations.

 

Other pack features are also accidents of history. The fact that the cap on most mouthwash bottles is a handy size for dosing, at around 30ml, is not intentional, Williams says, but coincidental. And tamper-proofing is a legacy of the days when the products contained alcohol and were more dangerous to children.

 

In fact, as with many products these days, the big change in packaging has been towards recyclability, with the advent of PET containers a couple of decades ago, which have now replaced old-style PVC bottles.