mPackting looks to upcycling with mBlack beauty packaging material

Italian company mPackting (Minelli Group) showed its new mBlack carbon sink material at MakeUp in Paris' 2023 edition.

Developed as an alternative to plastic, mBlack is a new, patented material manufactured by mPackting, part of Italy’s Minelli Group. Wooden scraps from Minelli Group’s production are transformed into a powder via pyrolosis. The resulting biochar is mixed with a biopolymer to create mBlack.

The material is suitable for injection molding, and runs on existing plastics machinery. Different finishes: imitation wood grain, soft touch or a glossy effect can be achieved via finishing molds. The company reveals to Formes de Luxe that it aims to develop a “family of mBlack materials”, and is currently working on making the material suitable for blow molding and extrusion molding. mPackting does not commercialize the raw material, but sells the finished product. These can any packaging applications that can be produced using injection molding, including cosmetics jars. Both masstige and premium cosmetics brands are the company’s target.

“mBlack [...] stocks carbon in a long-term stable form, reducing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and effectively acting as a climate cooling tool. Not only is mBlack a natural, scalable carbon sink, but it's also biodegradable, with no release of microplastics, and does not interfere with the food supply chain,” Minelli Group's Paolo Minelli said in a statement. “As far as I know, certified biochar-based materials have not been used in the cosmetics industry before.”

Other launches also on show at mPackting’s booth at Make Up in Paris include the Tango lipstick created in partnership with Italian glassmaker Bormioli Luigi, which combines a wooden base and glass cap, as well as the LegnaPin wood and cork caps crowning fragrance flacons from French glassmaker Verescence.

Founded in 2002, mPackting is specialized in cosmetics and fragrance packaging.