Design is the perfect combination of production requirements, functionality, and aesthetic research. Over the years, it has acquired an increasingly important role in any field, both at the industrial level and in everyday life.
Although various factors come into play at the time of purchase, from brand recognition to the type of product, design is increasingly affecting consumer's choices, becoming a real marketing tool.
The packaging sector represents this trend particularly well, as it fully exploits the innovative and multifaceted nature of design. The manufacturers of perfumes, bottles, and containers communicate their values and convey their messages through shapes and colours, creating a point of contact with the consumers. This is no longer restricted to the perfumery industry, traditionally very inclined to experimentation, but it also involves the food-packaging field, in particular the wine & spirit sector.
Special editions, personalised bottles, and co-branding partnerships lead the manufacturers of beverages and spirits to use ever-more inventive packages. In this framework, the metallisation of surfaces is one of the preferred techniques to decorate glass.
Flexibility and versatility are therefore factors of paramount importance, which every player in the supply chain must guarantee.
Metallizzazione Molteni (Barzago, Lecco, Italy) has turned these elements into its strengths, boosting its production and consolidating its presence on the international market as a provider of services for the packaging industry, particularly specialising in the glass metallisation niche.
Paolo Molteni established it in 1965 as a company focussing on plastic metallisation. Over the last fifty years, the firm, now managed by Paolo's son Mauro, has undergone various renewal processes that have helped it establish itself as a benchmark supplier in the field of plastic and glass treatments. Indeed, it initially focussed on the toy industry, collaborating with a single customer for almost forty years. In 2005, following the bankruptcy of this client, Metallizzazione Molteni undertook a first transformation project by offering the expertise gained in the plastic high vacuum metallisation process for the toy market to other sectors.
In 2007, a further change involved precisely its metallisation operations, as the company began to treat glass in addition to plastics.
"In order to reinvent our business and consolidate our presence in various markets, we acted on two fronts: the search for new customers from different sectors interested in our long-standing know-how and the expansion of our services of metallisation, including that of glass, and coating, which had been a secondary activity until that moment," says Mauro Molteni. "Now, we especially focus on the treatment of medium-small batches. This enables us to provide our customers with a fast service, excellent quality yield, and extreme flexibility; these factors, in turn, have allowed us growing exponentially."
"In 2014, we saturated our production capacity. That is why we started a further renewal phase. In 2018, we established Molteni Glass, the Metallizzazione Molteni division exclusively devoted to the processing of glass used in packages intended for the glass, wine & spirit, and house and personal perfume industries, which now account for 30% of our turnover," adds Molteni. "We also invested in new plants for both the metallisation and coating phases."
For the installation of an automatic coating system, Metallizzazione Molteni relied on M.I. Due (Besana in Brianza, Monza e Brianza, Italy), specialising in the design and construction of plants for the surface treatment of metals, plastics, and glass, especially for the packaging sector.
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