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LiquiGlide No-Stick Bottle Coating is Finally Happening

Elmer's is on-board, more companies will follow. How will it affect structural package design?

By Rain Noe - March 25, 2015

in Design Business | Product Design | Food

Consumer Reports once tested various bottles to see how much product is actually left when we consider it "empty." The results were shocking: Up to 13% of toothpaste, 15% of condiments, 16% of detergent and a whopping 25% of hand lotion gets thrown out with the bottle, as consumers find it too difficult to evacuate the rest.

So when we first heard about LiquiGlide we were excited (particularly me, as I worked in "structural package design"—bottle design—for over a decade). Applied to the inside of a bottle, this no-stick miracle coating would let us evacuate every last drop of lotion, shampoo, ketchup, wood glue, et cetera, saving consumers millions of dollars collectively.

But when we didn't hear anything more for almost three years, we figured LiquiGlide had failed, another miracle technology that didn't live up to the hype. Thankfully, we were wrong: The Times has just reported that LiquiGlide has secured $7 million in VC funding and signed up their first manufacturer, Elmer's, who reckons the coating will give their glue bottles "a competitive advantage." (They've signed an exclusive licensing agreement.)

For furniture designer/builders who work with wood, this may not make a difference; while being able to get the last drop of wood glue from a bottle would be satisfying, from what I understand most woodworkers prefer Titebond's more expensive glue, as it's got a longer shelf life and supposedly performs better. (Any opinions?)

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What interested us is LiquiGlide's formulators' earlier claims that their product would influence structural package design. "Those squeeze bottles need a big cap. By eliminating the need for such a big cap we'd save 25,000 tons of petroleum-based plastics each year."

While I don't doubt those figures, I do doubt they'll change the shape of bottles and cap sizes. I understand the logic: Bottle openings are sized as large as they are to give stubborn mayonnaise, ketchup and the like the room to get out. But those predetermined sizes come with manufacturing incumbencies. The companies that produce the injection-molded pre-bottles—they look like test tubes—that will later go into blow-molding machines are all tooled up to specific sizes.

Furthermore, once a bottle is blown it needs to be filled, at high speed on a production line encompassing thousands of bottles. Every second it takes to fill a bottle costs the factory something. If the neck is made narrower to accommodate a smaller cap, the filling tubes will need to be made more narrow as well. With the same pumping pressure, they'll therefore fill more slowly. Increased pumping pressure will not come for free.

It's possible that if LiquiGlide takes off, the increased savings of smaller caps will pressure manufacturers to retool the molding and filling equipment. But the cost of applying LiquiGlide will be a factor in this as well. For now, we'll just have to wait to see how well Elmer's new bottles sell. And the company claims that a mayonnaise bottle will be released this year or next, possibly followed by a toothpaste container.

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D H

9 years ago

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There are many bottles on the market that have been designed specifically 1) with larger caps, as they allow the bottle to be sat cap-down (e.g. ketchup); 2) with a large draft along the sides of the bottle for thicker formula (many mass-premium lotions are very thick); and 3) without small form details like crevices where the formula can get stuck. All of these features help move and 'prep' the formula to be at the bottom, ready for dispensing, whenever the user needs it. I have done structural designs where this seriously encroached on interior volume and limited creative freedom. And when bottle width/depth/heights are limited at shelf, we almost always had to cut back on volume (without, unfortunately, reducing the price accordingly). Add to that the amount left in the bottle (e.g. leftover 1oz in a 5oz bottle is more significant than 1oz in a 6oz bottle, spread over millions of bottles), consumers often receive much less than what they paid for.

For a product like glue, needing a wide-mouth cap for quick dispensing works against the thin nozzles that many users need for precise application. Even newer fruit preserves (with additives to make the preserve more "slidable") have been put into squeeze bottles (again, caps at bottom) to alleviate the hassle of spooning (with a knife, no less) from the bottom of the jar. If I can easily pour the preserve to the edge of the jar, then I don't see a need for a squeeze bottle with a large cap. (Jars tend to have better stackability on shelf than squeeze bottles, so there's some added bonus there as well). Of course, this is presuming LiquiGlide is or eventually becomes food-grade safe.

In any case, as with all new technologies, the upfront costs will need to be defrayed over time with volume and market penetration. Even modern tubes and bottles are actually laminates with 3 or more layers—to block UV, preserve formula, provide particular surface finish, etc.—that I don't see LiquiGlide being cost prohibitive for too long. In short, I can see this being a huge plus for the industry and the designers who do this for a living, and I'm glad Elmer's is spearheading this.

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Toby B

9 years ago

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There are some unanswered questions - for example, any implications for recycling the treated bottle? Any contamination of the contents by the coating (and would that be a problem, the only description of LiquiGlide I see is that it is "plant-based" and "microscopic")?

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Mike Cheung

9 years ago

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Titebond all the way for me. I buy in the gallon jug, so a residue left behind is not a big deal. I agree with Nate - a tip that sheds the wet glue before it has a chance to dry into a plug would be the ultimate wood glue innovation.

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Nate Scott

9 years ago

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Of the PVA glues, Titebond type I (red) is preferred by most woodworkers I know for basic glue-ups.
I would personally buy glue bottles with LiquiGlide for the environmental benefits alone (assuming that the reduced plastic is not offset by some other increase in toxics production elsewhere in the LiquiGlide manufacturing process). I would care less about getting the last drop of glue out of the bottle, because I often don't finish a bottle before it reaches it's 1-yr shelf life anyway.
For me the killer app would be if the glue nozzles also shed glue better before glue has a chance to dry inside. I truly hate cleaning out dried glue from the nozzle.

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