The Brazilian dispensing specialist, with its origins in pharmaceutical devices, is now solely focused on cosmetics. In 2021, the family-owned company is inaugurating its first factory in Europe, a sign of its ambitions for the local beauty market.
While the bulk of Wista’s market share is still mainly in its home market of Brazil, the company has been developing its presence in the US over the last two years via an office on the West coast. Late last year, the supplier set its sights on a new industrial site in Portugal following an offer from the Portuguese government that will subsidize around 70% of the costs of the new factory, which will be fully operational in 2021. Wista is investing several million euros in the operation. “This new entity—Wista DTS (for dispensing technical systems)—will produce all of our dispensing systems,” explains Flavio Unikowsky, International Business Manager. The company aims to forge a partnership with a local European tube supplier, while assembly will be done at the Portuguese site.
Unikowsky also outlined plans to set up an industrial site in the US for the assembly of its dispensing systems in 2022. There too, Wista will work with a local tube supplier.
On its home turf in Brazil, Wista’s factory is vertically integrated, from design to proprietary molds, extrusion, decoration and assembly operations. While production has been impacted by the coronavirus crisis, Unikowsky notes that the slowdown was not due to a decrease in orders, but in order to respect sanitary measures and protect its workers.
Mono-material, a must
Wista has remained proactive on the innovation front for its dispensing solutions, with a steady stream of new launches. In 2019 the company launched Sage, a one-way valve airless dropper with flow control designed for low viscosity formulas, including oils and hydro-alcoholic solutions. The airless system is billed as being the “lightest in the world” weighing in at just 5 grams.
An existing airless dispenser, the UD pump (that weighs less than 10 grams), is designed for micro-encapsulated formulas and those with high SPF content and allows the microcapsules to pass through the tube without breakage. Wista is currently launching the first mono-material version of this system—tube, pump and even the spring are made of PE, or alternately, in sugarcane-based PE.
In November, Wista is introducing an airless piston system that will also be mono-material and further along in the innovation pipeline, it is working on PCR alternatives, still in the context of a mono-material solution.
“Our three main pillars are formulation protection, packaging functionality and sustainability,” notes Unikowsky, “and those remain the driving forces for our innovations today and into the future.”
