Airless: Baralan Introduces its DEA 2.0

A few months ago, the Italian company unveiled the DEA 2.0, an improved version of its glass airless packaging, featuring a soda-lime glass bottle. “This type of glass ensures high performance,” explains Caroline Baranes, sales director, “as well as excellent compatibility with cosmetic formulations, while being fully compatible with standard recycling streams—unlike borosilicate glass, which requires specialized recycling processes.” ” The company now operates in more than 60 countries, with over 300 employees, five production sites in Italy and the United States, eight sales offices, and an extensive international network of warehouses. This “integrated” production model enables quality control, greater flexibility, and shorter time-to-market. “This year,” explains Caroline Baranes, “our priorities are to strengthen our manufacturing capabilities, expand our range of sustainable packaging, and continue to support global beauty brands with integrated solutions that combine Italian design, industrial expertise, and environmental responsibility.” And that’s not all!

Innovation remains one of your key competitive advantages.

Caroline Baranes: Absolutely. For us, innovation has never been about developing new products just for the sake of novelty. It’s about anticipating trends in the beauty industry and creating packaging solutions that combine performance, design, and long-term responsibility.
This vision is also reflected in our new 2026–2030 sustainability framework, “Rethink,” which integrates sustainability across three interdependent areas: how we design our products, how we operate, and the relationships we build throughout the value chain.
DEA 2.0 is a concrete example of this approach. It combines the premium value and compatibility of glass with the performance of an airless system, while being developed with circularity in mind and taking the product’s end-of-life into account.
At the same time, we continue to explore new dispensing technologies and packaging concepts that can enhance product usage and the customer experience. At the Luxe Pack New York trade show, for example, we unveiled a new push-button application system designed to optimize product dispensing and reduce waste, while offering great flexibility for various cosmetic applications.
For Baralan, innovation today means considering packaging as a whole: performance, aesthetics, ease of use, industrial feasibility, and environmental impact must all evolve in tandem.

The environment: a constraint or an opportunity?

Caroline Baranes: It is undoubtedly an opportunity, especially when sustainability is approached as a design parameter rather than merely a compliance requirement.
With our 2026–2030 Sustainability Framework, we sought to transform our long-term commitment into a structured and measurable strategy.
One of our priorities is to evaluate packaging from a life-cycle perspective, using established methodologies such as the material circularity indicator and life-cycle analysis, in order to better understand its impacts and identify opportunities for improvement.
This involves taking action on several fronts: reducing unnecessary materials, optimizing weight, increasing the content of recycled materials where technically feasible, improving recyclability and the separation of components, and developing packaging according to the principles of “Design for Recycling.”
But this framework extends beyond the product itself. We also measure Scope 1 and 2 emissions across the Group, map Scope 3 emissions, and engage our suppliers and customers, as we are convinced that significant progress requires collaboration throughout the value chain.
While regulations are certainly accelerating this transformation, our ambition is not limited to mere compliance. It’s about seizing this shift as an opportunity to design better packaging and offer beauty brands solutions that are increasingly transparent, measurable, and responsible.

You describe yourselves as a multi-material company!

Caroline Baranes: Yes, and we believe this is one of our major strengths. The future of packaging will increasingly depend on a deep understanding of materials rather than the idea that a single material can provide the answer for all applications.
Glass has been at the heart of Baralan since 1962 and remains fundamental to our identity, but our expertise extends to various materials and technologies. What matters is understanding their characteristics, performance, and end-of-life potential in order to select the most appropriate solution for each product.
Our role, therefore, is to optimize materials based on their function: reducing weight where possible, incorporating recycled materials, simplifying structures, improving component separation, and developing single-material solutions when they offer a real environmental and technical advantage.
This expertise also enables us to support our customers as regulatory requirements evolve across different markets. In the United States, for example, our well-established local presence—with finishing capabilities, sales offices, warehouses, and strategic inventory—allows us to combine this technical know-how with greater supply chain flexibility and local support.
Ultimately, we aim to help brands make informed packaging decisions by striking the right balance between design, performance, product protection, scalability, and end-of-life considerations.
Of course, the evolving regulatory landscape presents a challenge for the packaging industry and its various materials, but we also see it as an opportunity to further strengthen our presence in the United States. We have developed local finishing capabilities, sales offices, warehouses, and strategic storage facilities across the United States. This infrastructure enables us to support our customers locally, improve supply chain flexibility, and reduce the risk of supply disruptions.
Our well-established presence in the U.S. market strengthens our ability to respond quickly and remain a reliable and long-term partner for beauty brands.