Packages containing medication or expensive hair care products are frequently prone to spilling. Combine the small footprint that is required for the bathroom cabinet with the numerous small, slippery surfaces that these products are placed on and consumers can easily waste more product than they use.

To complicate matters further, the dosing required by these pharmaceuticals needs to be precise and very often a child-resistant feature is required.

Our concept for a precision pharmaceutical package contains a revolutionary anti-spill feature. In fact, once the closure has been removed, the package may be completely inverted without losing more than a drop of product.

The secret lies in the “anti-spill baffle” that reaches down inside the package. A precision dosing dropper dips down inside the wall of the bottle to draw product from the deepest part of the package. If the bottle is knocked over during use, the product migrates to the closure end of the bottle, but is prevented from exiting by the baffle. The headspace is now at the bottom of the bottle, and providing that the cross-section of the containment is managed correctly, a complete flip can be achieved without spilling.

Restoring the package to the upright position allows the dosing to continue unhindered.

The design also features a false base, so that the dropper reaches the lowest point of the bottle. The child-resistant feature is provided courtesy of a squeeze collar that must be squeezed before the dropper can be removed.

Companies must tread a careful balance between driving increased usage and ensuring that the package “actually delivers” the volume of product promised. In categories such as pharmaceuticals and hair care, when a store brand is sitting on the shelf next to the typically more expensive category leader, package design can play a big part in communicating exactly where that additional money is going. BP