Luxury Packaging 2024 | Dahlinger

Luxury packaging always on the search for innovation

With sustainable solutions and a short supply chain, Bernd Dahlinger represents the future of the sector.

Operating for more than 150 years and arriving at the fifth generation of family ownership, the company Dahlinger is an international provider of packaging and displays for luxury and lifestyle products, with its roots in the traditional specialist retail trade for watches and jewellery. However, they also design, develop and produce completely individual packaging solutions for its major customers.

The company has grown since 1871, becoming a multinational with an export share of more than 75% and 6000 customers throughout the world. During Luxepack Monaco, ItaliaImballaggio met the managing partner Bernd Dahlinger, who told us about the new trends in luxury packaging.

Selected and sustainable materials for luxury packaging

«Our company is based in Germany, where we produced until 2002» Bernd Dahlinger begins. «We then decided to move most of production to Asia, while moving a small part to Eastern Germany and Eastern Europe.

There, the finishing of the products and the production of simpler cardboard packaging is carried out. The main reason for the move was to optimise our competitiveness, considering that we also manufacture very complex, labour-intensive packaging in materials such as metal, wood and rPET, creating packages that are veritable design objects with an added value with respect to the product that they contain». 

One example in this sense is the processing in 100% recycled rPET of a mono-material package for the Breitling watchmaker company. The packaging design of the box combines sustainability, functionality, aesthetics and user experience.

The result is an elegant suede leather effect for the part in contact with the product which contrasts with the fabric effect of the body, designed to optimize the volume through folding the box that allows it to become totally flat. The watch holder cushion, moreover, can be unrolled and also used as a travel case, further optimising the functionality of the case. In 2021, Breitling’s packaging received the “Efficient Solution Label” mark assigned by the “Solar Impulse” foundation to solutions that have a positive impact on the environment and on the economy.

A short supply chain for materials

«The recent increases in the prices of raw materials is an issue also for the luxury and lifestyle market, which regarding sales would apparently appear less affected» Dahlinger continues. «We’re not talking so much about the luxury range but about the intermediate range, in which the topic sustainability is a particularly sensitive question and tends towards materials perceived as green, such as wood, cardboard and paper which offer the packaging an additional value content. There is, in fact, a clear return to wood, which represents a balance between aesthetic impact in the luxury market and sustainability.

The packaging is an important element to arrive at the product and must enhance it right from the choice phase, even though in the luxury market the focus is very biased towards content. It’s a question of particular interest in a sector in which objects must respond to very careful and innovative aesthetic logics that can veer away from a mono-material concept towards bi-component solutions which are more difficult to recycle. This is why interpreting sustainability more broadly is important».

The search for local suppliers, chosen in the areas where Dahlinger produces, aims at an extended concept of sustainability, which looks at the local economy and at the containment of emissions calculated along the entire value chain. It’s an approach that affects, for example, the choice of suppliers of wood selected for the packaging produced in this material.

Bernd Dahlinger continues on this point, «We tend to create a micro-economy around our production, following a sustainability concept that looks at the environment but also at the economy and people».

The trends of the next few years between packaging design and attention to detail

«Sustainable luxury is therefore one of the biggest challenges that Dahlinger sees among future trends. “In the lower price segment, we see the combination of cardboard and paper, which must be FSC-certified. Pulp made from paper that is sustainable and aesthetically fits our needs and replaces most vacuum-moulded inserts in a product.

For this reason, we are constantly on the lookout for suppliers who are able to develop innovative solutions, regardless of whether they are cardboard, paperboard or recycled materials such as rPET. Although MDF has excellent functionalities, it cannot be recycled due to its glued components. Recycled plastic also had a positive phase in the luxury and lifestyle market, but is now making way for proposals that are more related to materials such as cardboard and wood».