Page 67 - Print 21 July-August 2019

Business Intelligence
Ingredient
transparency
It not only regulators who want more information about products, a new generation of socially aware, health- conscious consumers are keen to have more information on the goods they buy, especially food.
In the US this has led to
the creation the SmartLabel transparency initiative, set up by the Grocery Manufacturers Association and the Food Marketing Institute. The platform provides a medium
to deliver information on factors including ingredients, place of origin, and certifications. This can be done digitally with a level of detail not possible on a physically printed label, with a QR code the most commonly chosen format
As of March 2017, more than 5,600 products of 205 brands from 26 companies were using SmartLabel. These include major food and consumer products manufacturers such as Unilever, Mondelez, Hershey, Coca-Cola, General Mills, L’Oréal and Land O’Lakes.
Once a company has the processes established for these brands they are rapidly expanding across the portfolio. It may take six months to work out the processes for the initial one or two brands, which is then followed by rapid expansion across other brands.
Recognising that artwork changes are expensive, the organisations recommend that brands get started by building the landing pages and levereging consumer accessibility via search, then follow up with
QR code inclusion linked to some
Intelligent packaging, like this example from Tetra Pak,
information for follow-on marketing opportunities, forging a closer connection to the customer, with surveys and promotional coupons.
Printed electronics
For all their current popularity
QR codes do pose some problems. The level of data that can be encoded is limited, their blocky monochrome format can disfigure carefully designed brand graphics, and they can prove hard and time- consuming to read. The fastest developing alternative is to create an electronic link using a low intensity radio signal. The existing RFID dedicated spectrum has recently been expanded by the Near Field Communication (NFC) protocol.
The pairing of smartphones and other types of mobile engagement tools to primary packaging and to point-of-sale displays is a natural evolution of branding, retailing
and consumer engagement. The opportunity for print firms comes in being able to print the electronics themselves – both the antennas
and increasingly the logic circuitry and sensor equipment. Printed electronics is one of the core products of the intelligent packaging revolution and has the potential to be the breakthrough technology for reducing costs and expanding functionality of intelligent packaging solutions. This potential is now seeing alliances between specialist technology providers and leading companies in the packaging and print sectors.
This includes Xerox, which has allied with Finland-based Thinfilm Electronics to create a commercial print line for printing five billion NFC-enabled OpenSense and NFC SpeedTap tags per year – which the company says will generate $940m (US$680m) in annual revenue.
In the UK, flexible electronics developer Pragmatic secured £18million ($35m) of funding, including a strategic investment from Avery Dennison. This has helped pay for the installation of its first FlexLogic system, capable of producing billions of flexible integrated circuits.
Go to the Smithers Pira website to download the full report.
Richard Cuthbert of Tetra Pak Oceania will present on connected packaging at the LIVE New Frontiers in Packaging event, set for 12 August in Sydney, see pages 56-63 for details. 21
other packaging artwork change.
In the future, for food and beverage products sold in the US that will
be using SmartLabel’s digital disclosure to comply with the federal genetically modified organism (GMO) disclosure law, a digital link will be required.
Consumer verification
Smartphones scanning QR codes are now used for product verification with an overt or covert QR code linking to a secure brand or third party database. New systems for problem sectors are reaching the market with the markings combined with different security elements, like the BevSeal platform from
Tesa Scribos targeting the wine and premium spirits area.
“The global intelligent packaging market’s forecast growth is much higher, more than 12.5 per cent year-on-year for 2018-2023.”
As consumers are empowered
to identify counterfeit products at point of sale, pressure is applied backwards through the distribution chain to ensure counterfeit products do not enter the supply chain in
the first place. Companies are no longer alone in pushing to solve the problem with expensive inspection and detection resources, as they
can rely on the pull from a global enforcement team of concerned smartphone-equipped customers.
Once this connection is made brands can also use the
is set to surge over the next five years, according to Smithers Pira.
Print21 JULY/AUGUST 2019 67