Plastic packaging: Pibiplast makes ambitions clear

Vincent Gallon

1 October 2019

After doubling their turnover in five years and investing 8 million euros annually over the past three years, especially to increase their production capacity, the Italian beauty packaging manufacturer shows high ambitions. The company aims to maintain its growth rate by opening new export accounts and directly supplying more major brands, but also by carrying out new external growth operations.

In 2018, the L Catterton and Ambienta funds acquired the majority of shares in Pibiplast, which sped up the growth strategy implemented by the company. Appointed CEO in May 2019, Fabian Piaggio intends to take Pibiplast to the next level.

Over the past three years, the Italian plastic packaging expert invested 8 million euros per year, in particular to extend production sites and get new equipment for bottle blowing, decoration, and mascara brush manufacturing and assembly. “Since early 2019, we have performed vacuum metallizing and lacquering operations ourselves, which both makes us faster and more efficient and helps manufacture larger series for a production capacity of over 100 million pieces/year,” explains Nicolas Garnier, Sales Director France.

Of course, these investments are aimed to enhance growth, but also to reduce time-to-market thanks to more flexible production management.

With three divisions - tubes, makeup (small bottles and applicators for mascara and lip gloss), and skincare (PET/PP or PE bottles, caps, and jars) -, about 310 employees and four production sites in Italy, Pibiplast achieved a 64-million-euro turnover in 2018 (doubling their sales volume in five years) and defined a new growth objective for this year.

The company has developed many standard models together with decoration solutions to differentiate them according to brands’ needs, and it benefits from the density of Italian makeup formulators, who buy both packaging and applicators to offer their customers turnkey solutions. “However, our growth mainly depends on our designing and manufacturing more specific models,” explains Nicolas Garnier. “So, we have considerably strengthened our technical teams to support our key customers. We work directly with many prestigious brands, mainly in Europe and Russia, and now in North and South America.”

Pibiplast now makes their own mascara applicators and brushes – the catalogue counts over 400 references – as well as their own fibres. The company can offer several sustainable plastic solutions based on bioplastic or recycled PET. As regards sourcing, the Italian manufacturer works with cutting-edge companies specialized in plastic bottle recovery and recycling. “They can deliver plastic with specific shades and more or less transparency, depending on our customers’ requirements,” adds Nicolas Garnier.

In an effort to speed up their growth on the global level and better serve their customers, Pibiplast inaugurated a new sales office in the US in May 2019: it completes the offices in Paris for French customers, and in Brussels, Belgium, for Northern and Eastern Europe. Stefania Bosi, Sales & Marketing Director, confirms the commercial organization should be further strengthened over the next few years.

Thanks to increased financial resources, the company will keep investing and is considering new acquisitions to diversify both geographically and product-wise. What is the idea? Double the turnover again, within five years.