How does the packaging and promotional products industry combine sustainable innovation and luxury codes to breathe new life into an ecosystem that is by nature far from sustainable?

In 2019, the global turnover of the luxury market reached a record high of €1,300 billion. The environmental and societal impact that accompanies these dizzying figures is obviously enormous, pushing the players in the luxury industry towards a rethinking of a model that was previously unmovable. If the idea of making the luxury industry a model of sustainable development seems at first glance utopian, if not impossible, innovative initiatives by the big names in the sector are multiplying, giving rise to a sustainable and ethical shift of unprecedented scope in the sector.

The luxury houses, initiators of the sustainable revolution
Although the luxury sector has been aware for some thirty years of the need to be among the good students of sustainable development in order to continue to exist, ambitious policies in this area really began to emerge at the turn of the 2010s. In 2015, the COP21 and the media coverage of the IPCC report sounded the alarm and launched the race for sustainable innovation among players in the luxury sector.
This race has intensified with the growing expectations of consumers, who want to buy more responsible brands, making luxury houses, the initiators of a sustainable revolution.
Marie Sermadiras, CEO of Cosfibel Group, sums up this dynamic as follows: “The luxury houses, through their outstanding reputation and influence, can initiate an international movement of awareness which, in the long run, can be repeated in other sectors”.

The pack & gift at the heart of this ecological revolution
Marie Sermadiras: “The packaging sector is at the forefront of the industries that have to keep up with these new practices, with a double obligation for its players: to meet the most demanding sustainable constraints while maintaining their raison d’être: creating memorable consumer experiences for luxury brands.
At Cosfibel Group, this adaptation work was launched in 2012, with the creation of the CARES program (Cosfibel Action for Responsible and Ethical Sustainability). Our design, purchasing, innovation, logistics (…) teams are all mobilized to make Cosfibel a leader in the ecological transition of our industry. Among the many initiatives implemented, there are 4 major guidelines of this strategy”.

Working on materials, the starting point for sustainable packaging in the luxury industry
The quality of luxury goods, like their packaging, often depends on the use of rare, expensive raw materials with a high ecological impact. Material research is therefore the very first brick in the building of sustainable luxury.
A telling symbol of this trend, the multi-material box, which is often energy-consuming, not very durable and difficult to recycle, is now less and less popular with the major brands.
Charlotte Lautier-Gaud,  Innovation Director, summarizes: “In packaging, as for luxury items, the codes tend to be reversed: lightness and sobriety guide the creation and shake up traditional codes. Boxes are a very telling example: the demand for single-material creations has never been so strong and is growing every year.

Recycling, in the heart of good practices
With the preservation of ecosystems and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in mind, recycling is now a major challenge to considerably limit the amount of natural resources taken.
Our design team is at the heart of this research process and is doubling its efforts to create products that are increasingly recyclable and/or reusable. The patented single-material closing system of the “Helsinki” box from a Cosfibel collection is a perfect illustration:

Entirely made of cardboard and paper, up to the patented closing system, this box from our design studio offers a resistance comparable to rigid materials, with a much lower weight, a minimal environmental impact, while being 100% recyclable without prior separation of materials.

The consulting dimension is growing
If awareness has been driven by the major luxury groups, suppliers can also be driving forces of a positive dynamic.
Cosfibel has had a CSR department since its creation in 2001 and has accelerated and centralized all its sustainable initiatives under the CARES (Cosfibel Actions for Responsible and Ethical Sustainability) label since 2012.

This CSR department has notably developed tools that enable our customers to make informed decisions when choosing materials for their projects. Among these tools, the “carbon score ” of an article allows, with a grade from A to D, to visualize at a glance how a material is positioned in comparison to another on a given project. We also conduct full life cycle assessments, a tool that allows for the global and multi-criteria evaluation of environmental impacts, and help our customers implement the best logistical solutions to reduce their emissions.

Nearby imports and local production
The fourth pillar of this sustainable strategy is the relocation of production.

click here to see the original article, page 70 of the Spanish magazine INDUSTRIA COSMÉTICA

GPA Global (“GPA”) today announced the acquisition of Cosfibel Group (“Cosfibel”), one of the leading players in luxury promotional packaging, luxury gifting and merchandising solutions.

Cosfibel and its founder Alain Chevassus are renowned for their work with premium and high-luxury brands. From L’Oréal to Chanel, LVMH to Rémy Martin, and Ladurée to Damman, Cosfibel has established itself as one of the world’s most acclaimed luxury packaging and merchandising providers. Based in France, with global service centres in 16 locations, and working across verticals such as beauty and personal care, wine and spirits, and fine foods, Cosfibel boasts an impressive client list of over 70 global brands.

This latest acquisition sees GPA further establish itself as a global leader in luxury packaging and advances GPA’s goal of growing nearshore and onshore manufacturing capabilities. It creates a strong European foothold for GPA through Cosfibel’s key manufacturing facilities in Spain, Portugal and Belgium. This growth in presence is key to GPA’s strategy of helping clients shorten supply chains to increase speed-to-market, de-risk the supply of materials, and reduce carbon emissions.

Adam Melton, CEO of GPA, said: “I’m excited to welcome the Cosfibel team to the GPA family. Cosfibel’s CEO, Marie Sermadiras, is a serial entrepreneur and she has joined GPA’s executive leadership to help further GPA’s expansion in Europe. Our global supply chain and manufacturing capabilities will enable us to better support Cosfibel’s customers and increases our prominence in the beauty and food sector, while furthering our leadership in wine and spirits. Cosfibel has a talented global team and its founder Alain Chevassus will work with us in a senior advisory role.”

Alain Chevassus, Cosfibel’s founder and Chairman, added: “GPA is a great match for Cosfibel. I strongly believe this alliance will create a bright future for both our clients and teams.”

Marie Sermadiras, Cosfibel’s CEO, explained: “I am delighted to join forces with GPA. This alliance is a clear recognition of the fantastic work our teams have put in to grow and transform our business in a successful and sustainable way despite the challenges posed by a global pandemic. GPA and Cosfibel’s complementary capabilities, creativity, and excellence in execution will enable us to grow even quicker, accelerate our diversification, and foster the transformation of the pack and gift industry.”

The acquisition of Cosfibel is the second major acquisition by GPA with Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board (“Ontario Teachers’”) as a shareholder, building on the recent acquisition of California-based Jenco Productions, which established a Teachers’ acquired a co-control stake in GPA in September 2022.

Raju Ruparelia, Senior Managing Director, Private Capital, Asia-Pacific at Ontario Teachers’ said: “We are impressed by Cosfibel’s superior design capabilities and strong reputation in its core markets and industry segments. The combination with GPA will further develop Cosfibel’s well-established European customer network as part of GPA’s strong global platform. Ontario Teachers’ is excited to see GPA continue to execute on its growth strategy by acquiring high-quality assets and partnering with strong management teams.”

About GPA Global

GPA Global supports growth by thinking big. Beyond packaging. From design and pack engineering, to supply chain, automation and more, we invest in the capabilities needed to deliver seamless packaging solutions without limits. Across three continents, 38 sites that are strategically positioned to put leading design & material innovation into the hands of our customers. With a strong commitment to protecting people and planet we have been focused on the future since day one adding sustainable materials without increasing costs or using automation to improve production whilst reducing waste, caring for the environment is an investment in the future, and lives at the heart of our business. Co-founded by Tom Wang and Adam Melton in 2007, the company is headquartered in North America and employs 3000+ people globally.

www.gpaglobal.net

About Ontario Teachers’

Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board (Ontario Teachers’) is a global investor with net assets of $242.5 billion as at June 30, 2022. We invest in more than 50 countries in a broad array of assets including public and private equities, fixed income, credit, commodities, natural resources, infrastructure, real estate, and venture growth to deliver retirement income for 333,000 working members and pensioners.
With offices in Hong Kong, London, Mumbai, San Francisco, Singapore, and Toronto, our more than 400 investment professionals bring deep expertise in industries ranging from agriculture to artificial intelligence. We are a fully funded defined benefit pension plan and have earned an annual total-fund net return of 9.6% since the plan’s founding in 1990. At Ontario Teachers’, we don’t just invest to make a return, we invest to shape a better future for the teachers we serve, the businesses we back, and the world we live in.

For more information, visit otpp.com and follow us on Twitter @OtppInfo.

Between mono-material creations and eco-responsibility, Cosfibel Premium’s new Spring/Summer 2023 Boxes collection is composed of 4 singular themes, declined in as many boxes, adaptable to your tastes. Zoom on this collection.

Monomaterial wood box, made of plywood wrapped with wood veneer

Clarity :

One piece, one color, one concept.
This theme was inspired by the great names of 1960s couture : Courrèges and Cardin, who emphasized pure and refined lines.

Here, we seek a balance between abstraction and elegance, but also between technology and well-being. This theme evokes sobriety, relevance and purity. The Venice box, made of wood only, plays with volume, construction and graphics. Its closing system is patented, without any additional material.

Monomaterial & plastic free box, made of paper greyboard & molded paper

Harmony :

This is the theme of dreamers, romantics and lucid, rural 2.0 who want to reenchant their daily life.

The key words of this theme are craftsmanship, charm and eco-positive creations. Harmony is a palette of calm and neutral colors, inspired by plants, fresh and soft.

Monomaterial & plastic free box, made of paper

Illusion :

Illusion is the fusion of the real and the artificial, where the world is reconfigured. A sort of third world, halfway between the metaverse and the real. We enter a new reality, a waking dream, filtered by fluorescent colors and bright clouds.

The Helsinki box set plays with colors, shapes, and reliefs to offer a condensed lightness and creativity. Moreover, its closing system does not use any magnets.

Monomaterial & plastic free box, made of paper

Celebration :

Authenticity and balance guide Celebration. This theme is informed by primal sensory, cultural treasures and Creole cultures.

The Praïa box fits perfectly into this theme with its jungle motif, colors and earthy, bright and festive tones. Its little extra ? A hidden QR code to add a personalized message or discover information about the product.

Contact us to find out more about Cosfibel Premium collections: contact@cosfibelgroup.com

After two years of pandemics that have undermined industrial activity and while sustainable development is at the heart of the issues, the pack & gift industry has to reinvent itself. In this context, Cosfibel Group relies on two strong values to respond with finesse to the demands of its customers and to assert itself as a leader in the transition of its industry: intimacy and creativity, the keystones of an efficient customer relationship and sustainable packaging innovation.

Through its various entities, Cosfibel listens to its customers and the needs they express in order to adapt its organisation and methods to meet their expectations with precision. A positioning that reveals a strong trend: the customer is at the initiative of the market transformation. We are moving away from the historical pattern of the passive consumer who undergoes trends to enter the era of the “customer 2.0” who dictates tomorrow’s trends through the expectations he or she claims. To sum up, the end consumer has new requirements (quality, materials, durability, lightness, etc.), which are passed on to our customers (the brands), who in turn pass them on to us so that we can finally implement them. This situation creates a virtuous circle of research and innovation, fed by the growing demand for sustainable packaging innovation.

Monomaterial, magnet-free, recyclable box by our design studio.

To respond to this new situation, Cosfibel is positioning itself as a leader in the consolidation and transformation of its market. This transformation must be designed to continue to fulfil our primary mission in a sustainable way: to help our customers create memorable consumer experiences. Secondary packaging, gifts, bags and accessories are all ways to bring magic to the discovery of the product and the brand. The strong demand for eco-responsible approaches is not intended to conflict with this mission, but rather to reinforce and perpetuate it.

In order to carry out this mission and respond to the necessary market transformations that our clients are expressing, every project begins with two key points:

• Intimacy with the client allows us to be tailor-made: each packaging and each gift must tell its own story: the history of the brand, its identity, its values, its commitments.
• Creativity allows us to surprise and make people dream: materials, design, closing systems (…): all these elements are a good opportunity to surprise, innovate, stimulate changes and create magic…

In addition to these two fundamental pillars, there is also security, which guarantees the successful completion of projects. We source the best materials and factories to support our customers by being as faithful as possible to their demands. To do this, we work with a hundred or so factories around the world, which have been audited beforehand to meet our quality criteria and those of our customers.

Among the other pillars that make up our core values, we have been investing in CSR since 2012. Since then, we have never stopped growing our commitment in this area: we are committed to reference labels, in particular as a partner of the Global Compact United Nations program, by being certified GRS (Global Recycled Standard), GOTS (Global ORGANIC Textile Standard) and FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) or through our Fairtrade Max Havelaar cotton licence since 2019. In 2002, we received the highest recognition of this commitment with the award of the Platinum status of the Ecovadis label.

A caramel cardboard and metal box produced in our factory in Belgium

Finally, we also rely heavily on innovation. Today, large groups are looking for impactful innovations to revitalise the pack & gift sector. Our vocation is to be at the forefront of this innovation in order to provide real added value in terms of advice and creative inspiration to our clients.

These key points (intimacy, creativity, safety, CSR, innovation) are at the heart of what the major cosmetics & fragrance groups expect from us. By focusing our strategy around these pillars, we are able to support ultra-luxury brands as well as brands present in parapharmacies, institutes or in the premium departments of perfume stores. In parallel to this multiple expertise, our international presence allows us to adapt our creations to all markets, from China to the USA, via the Middle East.

To ensure optimal control of the know-how specific to Europe, we have strengthened our offer thanks to our factories, which are the perfect illustration of the adaptation of manufacturing methods to the needs and desires of customers.

A range of recyclable cardboard boxes produces in our spanish factory

Thanks to our Cartec factory based in Belgium, we manage a 100% European RPET production, able to respond with unparalleled reactivity to various orders from the cosmetics and food industries. In this market segment, the observation is the same: customers’ expectations are evolving towards new, more eco-designed materials. This has led to a premiumisation of packaging: we are seeing a rise in orders from mass-market brands, which we are able to meet thanks to Cartec’s know-how and production capacity. Here again, the market is evolving hand in hand with our customers and in a “bottom-up” manner: from the customer to the brands and their production partners.

Grumbe, the group’s historic Spanish subsidiary, is another striking example of this market transformation that is as rapid as it is demanding: a specialist in plastics for decades, the brand-plant has reinvented itself around cardboard and multi-material creation, to meet the demands of the cosmetics, pharmaceutical and perfume industries.

Marie-Claire Figadère, Grumbe’s Sales Director, talks about these market transformations:

Marie-Claire Figadere, Commercial Director at Grumbe

“Born in the 1960s, Grumbe has succeeded in positioning itself as a leader in the plastic packaging sector at the height of the golden age of this material. Since 2019, at the instigation of our customers, we have been undergoing a strategic readjustment by positioning ourselves on multi-material expertise, in particular around cardboard, whose environmental impact is controlled and on which the sector is banking heavily. While cardboard represented 15% of our orders in 2019, we have made heavy investments in machines to accelerate this transition, with an immediate result that perfectly illustrates the demand for change on the part of our customers: in 2021, the share of cardboard will already exceed 50% of the total production carried out by Grumbe! Our order books are growing again as a result of this transition. This transformation has therefore been implemented to meet a strong demand, but has only been possible thanks to the close support of our customers who have taken up this challenge with us.”