Airless Bottle Components: What Each Part Is Made Of, Across 68 Models
Ask what an airless bottle is made of and the honest answer is a list, not a word. The format exists because the product never meets air, and that job is done by an assembly of parts, each with its own material. We publish the per-part material list for every airless model in our range, and across the 68 models there are 297 component entries. This is what those entries say.
One caution before the numbers. Everything below is what the source catalogue publishes about its own parts. It is a material list, not a specification: it says what each component is called and what it is listed as being made of, and nothing about grade, additive package or barrier performance. Where the source is inconsistent, we report the inconsistency rather than tidy it up.
The airless bottle components, counted across 68 models
The first thing the data settles is that there is no such thing as a typical part count. Across the 68 models the number of listed components runs from two to eight, and the distribution is narrow in the middle:
| Components listed | Models |
|---|---|
| 2 | 1 |
| 3 | 7 |
| 4 | 34 |
| 5 | 20 |
| 6 | 5 |
| 8 | 1 |
Four components on half the range, and three to six components covering 66 of the 68 models. The two-to-eight spread is not a quality difference; it is a difference in how much of the assembly the source lists as separate parts. A model that names its collar, its actuator, its disc and its body is describing the same physical object as one that names only a body and a pump, at a different level of granularity. Read the component list as an inventory of what was itemised, not as a measure of complexity.
The same caution applies to the names themselves, because the source does not use a controlled vocabulary. A bottle body appears as Bottle on 32 models, Inner Bottle on 16, Outer Bottle on 15, Out Bottle on 2 and Bootle on one. Caps appear as Cap (54), Inner Cap (11) and Outer Cap (10). If you are comparing two models side by side, do not assume that Cap and Outer Cap are different things. They may be, and they may not be.
The airless pump bottle parts that sit against the formula
Counting every component entry rather than every model, polypropylene accounts for 132 of the 297 entries — 44% of the whole file, and far more than any other material listed. But the average is not the interesting number. The interesting number is that the concentration is not spread evenly across the parts:
| Component | Models listing it | What it is listed as |
|---|---|---|
| Cap | 54 | PP 16, PETG 5, AS 5, ABS/PET 5, AS/ABS 4, PET 3, ALU 3, ABS 3, and seven further combinations |
| Collar | 39 | PP 18, ABS 11, ALU 5, PET/ABS 4, PP with an aluminium band 1 |
| Actuator | 32 | PP 28, plus three aluminium-bearing variants and one ABS |
| Bottle | 32 | PP 16, AS 11, PETG 3, PET 1, one PETG/AS |
| Disc | 20 | PE 16, PP 4 |
| Jar | 20 | PMMA 7, PETG/PET 4, AS 3, PP 2, and three further combinations |
| Inner Bottle | 16 | PP 15, PE 1 |
| Inner Cup | 15 | PP 15 — all of them |
| Inner Cap | 11 | ABS 7, PP 4 |
| Outer Cap | 10 | PMMA 3, ABS 3, PMMA/ABS 3, transparent ABS 1 |
| Base | 8 | ALU 5, AS/ABS 3 |
Three of these airless pump bottle parts are the least negotiable in the whole file, and they are the three that sit against the formula. The actuator is PP on 28 of the 32 models that list one. The inner bottle is PP on 15 of 16. The disc — the piston that travels up the barrel — is polyethylene on 16 of 20. Whatever else changes between two airless models, these parts tend to stay where they are, because they are doing a sealing and compatibility job rather than a decorative one.
Why the airless bottle inner cup almost never changes
The airless bottle inner cup is the cleanest case in the file and worth separating out, because it is the one component with no variance at all: 15 models list an inner cup, and all 15 list it as PP. Not a majority — all of them. On a 68-model range that spans aluminium caps, acrylic outer caps and a glass body, this is the part where the catalogue simply does not offer a choice.
Read that as information rather than as a limitation. If you are assembling a brief and want to know which decisions are still open, the inner cup is not one of them, and neither is the actuator on all but four models. The open decisions are downstream of these parts, and they are the subject of the next two sections.
What the airless bottle collar material tells you
The parts that face the buyer are where the material genuinely moves. The cap is the most varied single component in the file, with fifteen distinct material entries across 54 models, running from plain PP through PETG and AS to aluminium and multi-material combinations. The collar — the visible ring between cap and bottle — splits PP 18 / ABS 11 / aluminium 5, with one co-moulded polypropylene-and-aluminium variant. The outer cap on ten models is PMMA (acrylic) or ABS, and on three of those it is both.
So the airless bottle collar material is not a fixed property of the format; it is one of the few places where a real choice exists, and it is visible in the finished pack. If you have a material conversation to have about an airless package, it is mostly a cap-and-collar conversation.
Two materials in this file kill a claim that gets made casually about airless packaging. Aluminium appears in 17 of the 297 component entries — as a cap on three models, a collar on five, a base on five, and in two co-moulded collar variants. Glass appears once, as the body of one model listed as Out Bottle. This is not an all-plastic family and should not be described as one.
The airless cream jar components in the same file
Twenty-five of the 68 models are cream jars, and the airless cream jar components share the file without sharing the bottle’s vocabulary. Where a bottle lists a collar and an actuator, a jar lists a Jar (20 models: PMMA 7, PETG/PET 4, AS 3, PP 2, plus three further combinations) and an Outer Jar on three. The lid side appears as Inner Cap (11 models, ABS 7 / PP 4) and Outer Cap (10 models).
Capacity is the one dimension that carries across the split cleanly. Across the 68, the range runs from 5 ml to 200 ml, with 15 ml, 30 ml and 50 ml accounting for most of it, and the jars span the same 5–200 ml band as the bottles. A jar is not a different capacity class from a bottle here — it is a different opening.
Screw-on, snap-on and rotary: what the assembly field tells you
Each model carries one assembly value, and the split is decisive: 52 models are listed as SCREW ON, 14 as SNAP ON and 2 as ROTARY.
I am going to describe what those labels mean mechanically and stop there, because the field itself does not say whether a given assembly can be separated again. What the field does tell you is that screw-on is the default across this range by a wide margin, and that the exceptions are worth asking about specifically. Two questions belong in the brief on any airless package where end-of-life handling matters: is the pump assembly separable from the body, and if it is, what tool does that.
What the airless bottle components list is not
Three limits, stated plainly, because a material list invites more conclusions than it supports.
It does not give grades or additives. “PP” covers a wide space, and nothing in this file narrows it. Compatibility of a specific formula with a specific polypropylene grade is a test result, not a catalogue line.
It is not a bill of materials. The 297 entries are labels, and the labels are inconsistent — Base on 8 models and BASE on one, Outer Bottle on 15 and Out Bottle on 2. One entry carries a size-conditioned note, PP+ALU(30ml)PP(50ml), which says the collar material differs between the 30 ml and 50 ml versions of that model and has ended up in the material field rather than the size table. Anything automated that reads this file has to expect that and not silently merge it away.
It says nothing about decoration. Surface finish, printing and metallising are process choices made against a part, not properties of the material named beside it, and this file does not carry them.
Reading the airless bottle exploded drawing
Every one of the 68 models is published with an airless bottle exploded drawing and its source dimension table, and the drawing is the authority over the label. Where a name is ambiguous — and 297 entries written by hand will contain ambiguity — the drawing is what settles whether a part is separate, and where it sits in the stack. The component list and the drawing are meant to be read against each other, not instead of each other.
All 68 are on the airless bottles and cream jars page — 43 airless pump bottles and 25 cream jars — and each model there carries its own anchor from #fmt-3176 upward, so a single format can be linked directly rather than by describing where it sits. The same counting method applied to our pen range is in what a cosmetic pen is made of and the five pen formats.
These formats come from the catalogue of a manufacturing partner in our network and are made to order — we do not hold them as stock and we do not quote from a table. If you are choosing between an airless bottle and a cream jar, or need a part-by-part answer for a formula you already have, put the format in the form and we will work from the drawing: start an enquiry → Order quantity, like everything else here, is confirmed per project. And if you want to see how we document what a part actually did in production, our inspection file includes the lots that were held back, not only the ones that passed: read the file →