At Carow Packaging we specialize in liquid dispensing solutions. But not all liquids are the same. When it comes to skin care products, unique packaging can be needed to offer the consumer a superior experience.
One of the most important considerations when choosing primary packaging is the viscosity, or thickness of the liquid being dispensed. Many skin care products are produced in either a lotion or cream format, with lotions being on the lighter while creams are a bit heavier.
Jars are often the container of choice for thick lotions and creams. Most jars feature a cap that the user unscrews and then dips their fingers or another applicator into the liquid to dispense it. While that is fine for some products, when it comes to maintaining the purity and chemical integrity of the product inside, you don’t want your customer dipping fingers into the product and potentially contaminating the ingredients.
If only there was another way to get the lotion out of the jar. There is. It’s called an Adaptor Cap.
What is an Adaptor Cap?
The purpose of the Adaptor Cap is to fit almost any pump to any jar, allowing the user to easily dispense the lotion or cream, while preserving the purity of the product inside. The versatile dispensing system includes a completely customizable cap and a pump.
The adaptor cap/ jar pump assembly is common in the beauty, food and chemical markets, and is a perfect fit for retail, tester, salon and economy size applications.
Carow’s Proud, Innovative History with Adaptor Caps
Prior to 2000, the need for jar pumps was a small, niche market, with few manufacturers investing time or money on product innovation.
Customers called Carow complaining that they couldn’t find the lotion pump neck size they were looking for. Packaging manufacturers were only producing 24mm and 28mm caps for lotion pumps, but there was a need for 53mm, 70mm, and 89mm caps, too. In addition, pump manufacturers considered jar pumps difficult to make. There was no automated production process to ensure speed and quality. The “old way” of manufacturing jar pumps was through hand assembly, which was very labor intensive and thus expensive.
So, seeing a need, Bob Carow, founder of Carow Packaging, decided to innovate a dispensing packaging solution for this niche market. He started by designing a neck mold that could produce both 28-400 and 28-410 necks that would allow a pump to easily fit into and seal onto a jar cap.
To make life easier for Carow’s customers, Bob then created a pre-assembled 2-piece Adaptor Cap. Over the years, 1-piece and off-center Adaptor Caps have been added to the product line to support the beauty, food and chemical markets.
Thanks to Bob Carow’s desire to solve a problem, Adaptor Caps were born and continue to help customers by:
- Having readily available parts– preassembled, to get product in brands’ hands faster
- Leveraging automatic assembly to lower production costs
- Giving customers more than one supplier option
Components of an Adaptor Cap System
A typical Adaptor Cap system includes an adaptor cap, pump, liner, and jar.
The caps are produced in either 1-piece (the cap and neck are formed together in the mold) or 2-piece (cap and neck are formed separately and assembled). The 2-piece offers the most options, but the 1-piece can be produced faster and without the challenges that can sometimes come with manual or semi-automatic assembly.
The star of the show, however, is the cap and its almost limitless design options, with you choosing:
- Diameter
- Plastic type
- Shape
- Sidewall texture
- Neck finish
- Neck position
- Liner material, if needed
Here’s a quick at-a-glance chart of your adaptor cap system options.
Don’t let these options overwhelm you. Give our Account Specialists a call to design the perfect lotion dispensing solution to deliver your customers a superior user experience. Call today at 815-455-4600.
