Sustainable Packaging

twistMist™ Aerosol with no chemical propellants (Dennis Ossipov-Grodsky and Brad Barron)

• Cory Connors and Brodie Vander Dussen • Season 5 • Episode 346

Share episode

https://twistmistaerosols.com/


https://www.linkedin.com/in/dennis-ossipov-grodsky/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/brad-barron-6603201/


what if you could ship your aerosol with no chemical propellant? 

What if that could be reused 20-30 times? 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/cory-connors/

I'm here to help you make your packaging more sustainable! Reach out today and I'll get back to you asap.

This podcast is an independent production and the podcast production is an original work of the author. All rights of ownership and reproduction are retained—copyright 2022.

Cory Connors:

Welcome to Sustainable Packaging with Cory Connors.

Brodie Vander Dussen:

And Brodie Vander Dussen. Cory Connors: Today's guests podcast, friends of the show. They have a very amazing patented product that we think will revolutionize aerosol products in packaging. It's an incredible, sustainable option for, Aerosol items in the world of packaging. So very excited to have Dennis Osipoff Grodzki and Brad Barron from Alternative Packaging Solutions. Welcome guys.

Dennis Ossipov-Grodsky:

Thank you, Corey. Thank you, Brody. And, hello, the audience. Great to be back on your show guys. Yeah, it's good to

Brad Barron:

be back

Dennis Ossipov-Grodsky:

as

Brodie Vander Dussen:

well. welcome back to the show. We're really excited to have you like Corey said, the, if you're not familiar with twist mist and the things that you're talking, you're doing at alternative packaging solutions. can you give a little brief background for both of you for the audience?

Dennis Ossipov-Grodsky:

Since Brad is the veteran, and he was at the beginning of Twist Mist , I let him go. Yeah.

Brad Barron:

Yeah. so Dennis and I both come from long careers in the consumer goods industry. I was a packaging development leader for 25 years at Procter and Gamble. Working on lots of, multi billion dollar brands, leading and I used to lead sustainability for the corporation for packaging Dennis similar on the commercial side, trying to figure out the commercial model to make things when, that's always the challenge, especially in sustainability. It's like, how do you. Be sustainable and be loved by your consumers. in 2017, I had joined APS, to bring twist mist to market. And twist mist is a way to have an aerosol experience without pressure. it's a mechanical system. I've got one here. the bottle is just a regular old bottle. And for the consumer, when you twist the top, You can then spray just like a regular aerosol. You can spray upside down. You can spray your back and so forth. And it's a totally mechanical system, which is what brings all the sustainability benefits, but also importantly, quite a few consumer benefits that we're bringing to life.

Brodie Vander Dussen:

I love it. I wrote down what you said that something sustainable and loved by consumers, I think is the goal. And sometimes it's way harder to actually do than said.

Brad Barron:

but it actually, I would say it has to be loved by consumers. 1st, 1st, and in addition, be sustainable because if you're not loved by consumers. You're going to have a niche audience, if it's inconvenient or not to do, we got to make a better product experience.

Dennis Ossipov-Grodsky:

And then that's why every time we start working with a new partner and we're working right now with pretty much every major CPG company in the world, our conversation always starts, of course, with technical. Like we explain what Twistmix does, but then we shift conversation into let's make sure that we identify what we call point of difference type benefit. For consumer, because packaging alone is never enough. Like, why should I use this instead of what I've been using for so many years, right? So we always start with identifying critical POD benefit that consumers will first, and then WistMist will be able to deliver it.

Cory Connors:

It's an exciting innovation. And there's a bunch of reasons that make it more sustainable. And I want to go over those kind of in detail. number one, you don't need chemicals for propellants. And so this is not only a sustainable improvement, but it's a health improvement and an environmental, huge win, but number two, it's. Technically refillable, right? or reusable? the mechanical portion of it. Can you talk us through that and shipping the whole thing the first time or maybe just shipping the top separately and then the consumer can just buy the refills at the store in the future.

Brad Barron:

Yep. Absolutely. And I'm looking around my desk here for a sample. It's like I don't have, yeah, here we go. So you can have both the main unit as well as, sorry guys. The lighting's bad today here. The main unit and the refill unit. It looks like

Cory Connors:

you're glowing. I love it. Yeah,

Brad Barron:

I know exactly. Red

Dennis Ossipov-Grodsky:

always does.. Brad Barron: I'll back up. the main unit when this is empty, so the consumer has sprayed it all out. What they can do is they can just take their refill, which just has a regular flat cap, take the cap off, take the head off the old bottle. And now you have a refill and we've actually designed the head so that it can last for 20 to 30 refills. So it's really going to last. As long as the consumer realistically is willing to refill, I think most consumers won't refill 20 times, but they're not going to stop refilling because the head breaks. They're going to stop refilling because they want a fresh pack, or it gets dirty or their dog runs away with it. Or, who knows? Who knows what happens?

Cory Connors:

They want to try another flavor or sent or whatever.

Brad Barron:

And that's possible because we never ever pressurize the bottle. Everything is in the head and that's really the key differentiator from a technical point of view that results in all the benefits that we have.

Brodie Vander Dussen:

And I imagine that the bottom of that, like the bottle part of that could be made out of recyclable. Materials or even PCR as well?

Brad Barron:

Yeah, absolutely, because the bottle is just a bottle, so in this particular case, this is, EBM HT PE could be a hundred percent PCR. It could be glass, it could be ceramic, it could be PET. The bottle is just like a normal bottle, and that's important for materials, but also consumers know how to recycle bottles. we've seen this a lot in the aerosol industry. Consumers don't know what to do and they're like, in some places you can put it in your bin, some places you can't. with a bottle, you take it, put it in the bin and it gets recycled and then put the head on your next fresh bottle.

Dennis Ossipov-Grodsky:

and another massive benefit is of course design because all of a sudden That bottle can be designed into anything right right now. every aerosol is a scuba tank. And because we don't have any pressure, we can design any shape or form. And we are working with different categories. Beauty might need different. Look and feel versus disinfectants, right? And, since, Corey, we met first time, at the U. S. Plastics Pack, Circularity Awards, where we, received the top award for, reusability. since then we received the Fast Company Award for, design, sustainable design in multiple categories. So I think that's, industry is recognizing the benefit of, of TwistMist on, on multiple levels. It's great to see.

Cory Connors:

Congratulations. another win that you guys are racking them up. This is so cool. Well done.

Dennis Ossipov-Grodsky:

Strategy of small wins. We're clawing our way into the market. Yes. So you

Brodie Vander Dussen:

mentioned, disinfectants and cosmetics, beauty, what other products would fit under this? I'm thinking even like, I've seen olive oil sprayers. I've seen, my mind's just going with ideas of what could be put in this. Is there any limitations? Anything that you guys think would be the best fit for this?

Brad Barron:

the way that we describe it to brands is we're appropriate for any kind of product that you can put into a bag on valve or a nitrogen powered aerosol. We give a much better experience, we're more sustainable. But if you work in those systems, you work in ours, some products like that are very thick. Olive oil is actually 1, you really need to have either a kind of a strange spray pattern, like a fan shape spray pattern, or you need to have a LPG aerosol. So what I would say is the things we don't work with adhesives, some hair care products, even though a lot of styling products and hair care products were great with, that's about it really at the end of the day. you mentioned, some of the categories, pretty much everywhere in personal care, disinfectants, cleaning, air care, technical lubricants, insects, repellents, so yeah, sunscreens. Okay. back to what we're doing there. pretty wide variety of products.

Dennis Ossipov-Grodsky:

Wow. And, and this is why it's important, Brody, for, companies that we're dealing with working with our partners is because many of them are portfolio companies, and they play in different categories and being able, if we're able to introduce a New packaging technology that is, can be used in different categories. Of course, it's economies of scale, right? So consumers, will normalize the usage of this new technology very quickly. So that's why it's so important that we were not just one category player.

Brodie Vander Dussen:

Yeah, absolutely. I love the idea of it being in my kitchen in my bathroom and under my sink and all of it. I think even with you have. Like you said, it's a new technology, but people know what to do with bottles and people will quickly understand the behavior change. And so I'm excited. let's do this.

Cory Connors:

your brand and your company is becoming quite famous. You've reached recently appeared on the cover of the world of aerosols. is that the right world aerosols magazine? They're winning awards. How are these accolades helping you launch this new system?

Dennis Ossipov-Grodsky:

over the last year, a year and a half, I should say, we were able to engage with, as I mentioned, pretty much with every major tier one, tier two CPG company in the world. And, as guys, it's a long process and, qualifying bread and I, we're both coming from PNG, so we know what it takes. Machine works slowly, diligently, and those are necessary steps. Over the last year and a half. We've been deeply engaged with all major players. They went through a technical qualifications, internal qualifications, and many of them are moving into So we're moving into large scale consumer testing right now, and that's what bread and I are spending our time with, including our partners at Lindell, who are absolutely incredible, helping us make sure that we have sustainable, supply of, of twist missed, and I will let Brad talk about that in a second. But, yes, so we're moving into consumer qualification at scale with key major players. But anything on that on the production side?

Brad Barron:

Yeah, on the production side, what's exciting news is when we saw you last time, Corey, we had our samples out of our pilot equipment and we were starting to do the tests. We're actually moving that pilot equipment into production. We're still working with companies to get the commitments that we need to be selling 10s of millions. But right now we have capacity available, so we can start selling at the hundreds of thousands level starting at a lower level and then ramping up. And there's been enough interest from players that want to be early adopters. We're in the process right now of bringing that out there and actually, we're announcing that now on this podcast to tell you the truth.

Cory Connors:

Congratulations, we're honored to be a part of your celebration.

Brad Barron:

We're going to be talking this at ADF now because it's really important for this to be in the market and real, not just tests similar to the work that we're doing to launch our own brand in the sun care area. Get out there in the marketplace. Get the real experience.

Cory Connors:

I can tell you, as somebody who has fair skin, I need a lot of sunscreen, and it's very frustrating to not have the spray sunscreen that we used to like so much because, the aerosols just aren't as good for the environment. to be able to use your product is, it makes a consumer like me feel better. About what I'm doing and, and it's a better experience to, like you said,

Brad Barron:

yeah, and that's key, right? as we said, it's got to start with the consumer loves it. And then it has to be sustainable. We've done a tremendous amount of technical benchmarking that demonstrates that unfortunately, the sunscreen sprays, you pick up today and spray yourself. You think you've covered your body. You really haven't. there's a lot of spots with no sunscreen on it. maybe spots with extra sunscreen on it, but that's why you're supposed to, after you spray, then take your hand and spread it all around. What we found is that when you use our system, because of the type of spray, we get the quality of spray. We get, you just get an even coverage from the start. we fully expect that we're going to be getting much better sun care protection. you're not going to have those burn spots on your body and so forth.

Cory Connors:

and I think, yeah, go ahead.

Dennis Ossipov-Grodsky:

No, please, go ahead, I'm out.

Cory Connors:

Okay, I was thinking one of the, one of the coolest things, that I liked about this is a company can use the same bottle that they've been using, right? oftentimes, not every time, but they don't have to redo their mold. you can accommodate their current bottle. Generally,

Brad Barron:

it would have a different thread finish.

Cory Connors:

Okay.

Brad Barron:

So they do have to do some redo on the molding. But what's important is we can match the equity that companies have out there. if a company has a shape, as Dennis said, aerosols are like scuba tanks and, we don't have to be a scuba tank. So we can be what your brand is supposed to look like. In some cases, yeah, maybe you can modify your bottle molds. In most cases, you'll probably take advantage of it, plus the need to have a different neck finish to, to create new.

Dennis Ossipov-Grodsky:

plus most of the aerosols right now are in aluminum bottles, which, and aluminum is expensive right now. So going into something on plastic side, PET will help economics as well. Significantly. but I just want to go back very quickly. If you don't mind to the science behind the bread is very humble. because the amount of work that he and his team has invested into uncovering science specifically science of sunscreen is absolutely astonishing. And, We did a massive amount of comparative testing, spectral analysis, particle distribution analysis, and what we found is that number one problem consumers have, as Brad mentioned, is coverage. And one of the key issues is that we don't know how much product. We are spraying on our body. And based on the research that was conducted by a professor in Georgetown University and then published in New York Times, we have to use about one ounce of sunscreens to cover us the entire body properly. But how do we know right? Consumers right now don't know how much desperate spring on. that was one of the key innovations that we're able to introduce. We're introducing the window on the side off our bottle off some twist missed powered sunscreens. Why? Because we have no pressure. We can show what's actually, we can show consumers what's inside of the bottle, and not the mechanism, but actual product and consumers can know exactly how much they're using. So that's number one. Another one, another massive benefit is that because Twistmiss generates This consistent pressure, proper pressure, not too high, not too low, but exactly the right amount of pressure from the first spray to the last five bar. We're creating a very universal coverage. And when we spray, when consumers spray, sunscreen on their arm or their body. You can actually see those particles and you can see how they're creating the layer immediately. So there is almost no need to spread the product anymore because the coverage is so perfect. And Brad and his team once again, we generated visuals. Demos and guys, we can show them to you whenever we can post it, the link on to your podcast, but that's every time people see side by side comparison of what you're using right now and what Twismis can generate. It's always a wow experience. So I don't need to inhale all of that. And I would say

Brad Barron:

last summer, Dennis, use the system. We use the system. We've had consumers using this. 1, 1 quote we had, it was a group of, I think it was 8 people out on the boat all day in Florida, kids, adults and so forth. They came back after 8 hours. He says the 1st time. Nobody's been burned because every single time we go out. people use it in the wind blows the spray away, or you think you're protected and you're not, you saying this is amazing. Everybody's protected and that's the magic. Right? So it's like breakthrough consumer experience that you want in a package. That's inherently. Breakthrough sustainable, so consumers will, some will run after the sustainability aspect, but everybody's going to want that consumer benefit.

Dennis Ossipov-Grodsky:

we were geeking out on consumer research and, when, especially women, because we had many women and we were testing for beauty product, but, every time they would use the product and spray, they would say, This is a beautiful mist and universally, 99% of women said this is a mist. And we said, like, so define what else is there? there are sprays, like define the spray versus mist for us. And spray is always universally a harsh stream. and that's why consumers right now, they're afraid of spraying sunscreen. Into their face because they see it as a spray. Would you use twist mist to spray both face and body? Absolutely. another consumer unlock, right? All of a sudden you don't need two products. You can use one and be confident that you're covering your body properly. Little things like this, again, on the marketing side, geeking out. I love those insights.

Cory Connors:

All I can think about is, you haven't missed with TwistMist, Oh,

Brad Barron:

great.

Cory Connors:

You can use that. first one's free. Yeah.

Dennis Ossipov-Grodsky:

Excellent, Exciting. Never miss with TwistMist. Beautiful. So yes, I think, the brand that we are going to launch, at the beginning of next this year, it's called UV defense. And, the key benefit is, it's a flawless coverage with no rub application or face and body. again, so far, excellent feedback from consumers. so we're looking at March, April, when we're going to. Start launching it.

Cory Connors:

I'll be your first customer, very

Dennis Ossipov-Grodsky:

excited. I was going

Brodie Vander Dussen:

to say, is that available in the U. S.? Where is that available to buy?

Dennis Ossipov-Grodsky:

it will be in the U. S. We'll make it to the, we'll launch in the U. S. and then.

Brodie Vander Dussen:

So Corey's going to be your first customer, and then I will be your second.

Dennis Ossipov-Grodsky:

Alright, we'll send you guys the link. track delivery so that it's, it arrives perfectly at the same second. So both of you are going to be first time.

Brad Barron:

Actually, we'll make Brody show up there first. So yeah,

Cory Connors:

she went, we have exciting things coming up. You're coming, going to Paris packaging week, next week. Any, anything else you wanted to talk about for that event or what's coming in soon, the near future.

Dennis Ossipov-Grodsky:

I think, first of all, this is our, Brad, I think it's our fifth anniversary that APS is going to be an ADF show, and as you guys know, this is the largest show in the world, and we always, those two days are the busiest days for us in the year because we have a constant stream of, people Of, people who are interested in and, brands who are, who want to partner with us. So this year, we will be looking for three to five brands in the smaller brands, startup type brands or brands that are, up and growing, that, that are iconic in their categories so that we can partner up with them and start quick normalization. Because as Brad said, We will, the, major CPGs, they will take their time, right? They're going through the process, but we really would like to start building the, normalization in market with smaller brands like this. Now, it's going to be a competition because we had so much. Interest coming from that's a tear of the market for twist missed. So we are going to be very selective, identifying, as I said, 3 to 5 partners in different categories. So we can start launching into market ASAP

Brad Barron:

and this is with our pilot equipment that we have that eventually put into production. And it's worth saying. Just because different companies have a different approach. We took the pilot equipment approach, that, we used to take it PNG. like, I used to lead tied North America. Okay, it's pretty serious pilot equipment. This is not just things to make parts. These are proper small scale, pilot equipment, robotic assembly, perfect quality. so it really is markets. Quality systems, that's exactly what would launch, when we have the larger supply chain in place to scale up. So these lead adopter companies, they're going to be 1st movers with an amazing transformative experience

Dennis Ossipov-Grodsky:

and just want to mention once again that Lindell and Lindell's team, they're incredible partner for us. They're helping us bring it to life as well as the, the international design firm. Yeah, absolutely. They've been with us since the beginning and they are absolutely greatest partners. We could have dreamt about. you'll see

Brad Barron:

us at both of their boots booths that actually we're, we're collaborating with them and, and that's really our model to change the industry. Dennis and I have. Tremendous experience about how to bring transformative innovation to market, but nobody does that by themselves. not even the big CPG companies. when we were at PNG, we leveraged our suppliers and our agencies and so forth to bring this transformation. that's exactly what we've done. Right? So we're, we're an innovation company, but we pack a pretty big punch because we're taking, I would say the same approach, but actually, we're taking a better approach than we had to at, at PNG in many respects.

Dennis Ossipov-Grodsky:

And the industry once again is recognizing it, during the last show, but they want to talk about your trip to London and, the British association of Arizona manufacturers.

Brad Barron:

So

Dennis Ossipov-Grodsky:

last we were invited.

Brad Barron:

Yeah. Last spring I was a speaker at, the Bama Innovation Show, in Leeds. So went there, and this is a really, industry supply focused, for the packaging geeks of the aerosol industry to a large degree. and as I described it from Dennis, when I came back, half of the room thought that we were totally transforming the future of the industry. The other half of the room wanted to kill me. because they didn't like the change that we were bringing. but, in all seriousness, all industries evolve and, and as I said, there's a lot of products that are packed in pressurized aerosols today. That twist mist is the best solution. Okay. And I think that's where the industry is going to head. There's also many that it's not the best solution, so we're not pretending that we fit for everything. That would be ridiculous of us and we've got bright things ahead. we've got our limited launches coming up with our current supply chain, complete the qualification work that's underway at the brands. This is the commercial and consumer qualification and then the next couple of years start to see the big launches out there and the industry start to shift.

Cory Connors:

Congratulations. Go ahead, Brady.

Brodie Vander Dussen:

I was going to say that. I'm amazed. Like I said, I'm ready to buy it. I'll be test for one, test for two. for those who want to buy on the other side, brands, people who just want to learn more, maybe what's the best way to get in contact with either of you and, learn if this is a good fit for them.

Dennis Ossipov-Grodsky:

So we have, our website, twist, mist aerosols. com. we. People can submit their requests there, or they can find Brad and I on LinkedIn, probably the fastest way to get in touch with either of us. Yeah,

Brodie Vander Dussen:

that's great.

Cory Connors:

We love LinkedIn. Thank you both. this has been amazing. great episode. Really excited to post this and see you in Paris, next week.

Dennis Ossipov-Grodsky:

All right. Thank you so much for inviting us. Always a pleasure.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Cory Connors

Host