PremiumBeautyNews.com – Jean-Yves Bourgeois

30 million dollars in sales, 1500 people spread out across four production sites, including a brand new one, built in 2013 and, above all, a real historical know how in the manufacture of lipstick tubes, which accounts for 90% of sales, Kemas, a family owned Indonesian company, clearly intends to take advantage of its new production capacity and flexibility to move its pawns forward on the world chessboard of beauty packaging. Explanations….
More than thirty years ago! It was in 1980 that Ladjuar Dinata, a former employee of the Revlon Group, decided to set up his own production company. Thirty-five years later, Kemas continues to grow strong with a global expansion in sales.

The company has become one of the biggest, if not the largest producer of lipstick tubes in Southeast Asia. Kemas produces approximately 100 million units globally per year!

In 2013, the company has given itself a ’little more’ – some will say “much more” – means to achieve its industrial expansion. “Our current industrial capacity would allow us to easily increase our output by twofold,” explains Alex Hong, Account Manager. That is, 200 million units! But not under just any conditions! 80 injection machines (the majority being high quality German made machines) with 29 of them installed in the new site, which operates entirely under strict temperature controlled, cleanroom environments that extends throughout the production and assembly process.

Ladjuar Dinata continues to expand the business with the help of two of his children, one of which being his daughter Dina Kumara Dinata, Marketing Director. Investments undertaken in 2013 will have amounted to 10 million dollars. As a result on this continued investment, Kemas has implemented a ’state of the art’ manufacturing process with a high level of automation, the whole process operating in a cleanroom atmosphere. Dina claims, “we are not done yet” with an emphasis to develop and implement a 5th automated assembly line in 2015.

Lipstick tubes: not that easy!
Complex, a lipstick tube? Yes, very complex with extremely narrow tolerances. “There is no room for error,” insists Dina Dinata. “We are walking a very fine line in achieving the most optimum mechanism specification and performance,” adds Nata Dinata, Director of Product Development and the son of Ladjuar Dinata. “This is the reason why we continue to use only the highest quality tooling coupled with the best equipment in the market. Kemas prides itself in being able to consistently control the quality we put out, thus ensuring that the millions of Lipstick cases we supply to market continually meet the high standards our customers expect from us,” states Urip Tjendera, President-Director of PT Kemas since 1994.

Kemas has a portfolio of a dozen different mechanisms and knows perfectly well how to take advantage of its in-house expertise, which also includes the design of all its injection moulding tools. Even though lipstick components still represent the majority of production activity to date, the leaders at Kemas have not neglected other sectors such as jars, make-up cases and lip gloss packaging. “We have now expanded into the manufacture of eyeliners and who knows what the future holds with other product categories,” concludes Urip Tjendera.

On the commercial side, Kemas has now expanded its Sales and Support presence in the USA with a fully functional state base team. “Since 2013 the US based team is responsible for providing a complete end to end service to our customers,” states Darren Eade, VP of Sales. “To help strengthen our position in the Global marketplace, it is important for us to continue to diversify our product portfolio in-line with our core competencies.”

Find original press release here: https://www.premiumbeautynews.com/en/lipstick-tubes-the-kemas-answer,8020