Kyle Parker, MD of Pagemark Africa will be speaking at the Johannesburg Chamber of Commerce and Industry workshop focusing on trade mark counterfeiting and its role in illicit trade in the FMCG industry.
See below for details.
What makes POLYtrust ® edible UV invisible and visible inks unique is that it utilises our unique polymer thermal inkjet technology, meaning our ink can stick onto fruit & vegetables and not be easily rubbed off.
Watch the video below of a POLYtij ® S1 printer printing onto lemon produceables with the GS1 RSS14 barcodes, standard in our POLYtij ® printers.
I understand you launched the Polytrust edible UV invisible ink at Auspack in March. How did the launch go and what did it involve?
Yes, POLYtrust ® edible UV invisible ink was launched at AUSPACK 2017 in Sydney. The interest in the technology was very high with genuine interest from the industry.
We exhibited POLYtrust ® edible UV invisible ink printing in one of our in POLYtij ® S3-1 HP thermal inkjet printers. The aim was to show green apples printed with an actual picked date on the apple itself.
We had a bucket of green apples printed with a “Picked Date” and the show attendees had to guess which one was the freshest.
In a nutshell, what exactly does the invisible ink offer the fresh fruit and vegetable industry? And how can they access this technology?
POLYtrust ® edible UV invisible and visible inks offer new options never thought possible. Now growers or wholesalers can print with HACCP certified edible inks that can either be invisible or visible to the consumer. Even better the cost of applying a “Best Before date”, “Picked Date” or even a “LOGO” for Growers on individual fruit such as apples, oranges, stone fruit or even kiwi fruit is extremely low. So what does this mean for us, the consumer? The days are numbered when I or my family have to eat a rotten apple……good!
What makes POLYtrust ® edible UV invisible and visible inks unique it that it utilises our unique polymer thermal inkjet technology. This means our ink can stick onto fruit & vegetables and not be easily rubbed off.
What led you to develop the technology?
Have you had this experience buying fruit at your local supermarket?
You buy what appears to be great looking tasty fruit. You take it home for you and your family to enjoy and then with horror you cut the fruit and discover…….it tastes terrible or even worse its totally rotten inside due to poor storage and refrigeration.
The question my family constantly asks is “How old is this fruit?”.
In Australia, fruit is picked “green mature”, rarely ripe. Apples face months of storage, bananas three days of truck travel and stone fruit must withstand the consumers’ squeezing hands.
Behind the facade of the supermarket fresh food section are many tricks of the trade, and even some optical illusions: tomatoes that appear ripe, but aren’t, 11-month-old apples, bananas that are gassed with a hormone and warmed yellow. The methods possibly do compromise taste and nutrition, but the supermarkets say they are done in the consumer’s name. If food does not taste like it used to, perhaps it’s because we’ve demanded it that way.
Now there’s a way that Wholesalers, Growers and retailers can really check to see if the fruit they have is fresh BEFORE it gets to the poor old consumers like us.
Has this technology been used in other sectors before? Or overseas?
Polymer thermal inkjet technology, sold under the brand of POLYtij ®, is sold globally and offers the most advanced thermal inkjet ink technology for Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) in the world today.
Could you see this technology replacing stickers on fruit one day?
Maybe. We see a new roll for the stickers. Inserted of generic produce identification we believe the stickers can be upgraded with a QR, 2D or GS1 RSS14 barcodes for marketing information linked back to specific websites. Thus the combination of barcode stickers and POLYtrust ® edible UV invisible and visible inks will offer Growers & Retailers the ability to provide the consumer with both freshness, provenance and nutrition information all from the actual fruit itself.
What feedback have you had from the fresh produce industry, and who in particular is taking interest in this (e.g. wholesalers? retailers?)
It’s still very early days. However the Growers we have spoken too are genuinely excited by what we showed at AUSPACK 2017. Clearly as we speak to more people in there industry we will uncover even more applications that POLYtrust ® edible UV invisible and visible inks can be applied too.
What is very clear from the Growers that we have spoken too is that they need identification and marketing tools to help them sell more of their products.
You’ve mentioned previously that dates such as ‘best before’ could be labelled on the fruit. How would you calculate this?
A key element of our identification solution is the low cost of our technology. The POLYtij ® HP thermal printers capital cost is up to 75% lower than other technologies such as Continuous Inkjet (CIJ). Thus Growers and Wholesalers can install POLYtij ® HP thermal printers using POLYtrust ® edible UV invisible and visible inks on multiple production lines in a cost effective manner, The cost per code printing a “Best Before date”, “Picked Date” or even a “LOGO” is less than 10 cents per thousands codes.
Is there any other news you’d like to mention from Digital Ink Technologies?
Digital Ink Technologies Pty Ltd has just released our POLYtrust ® anti-counterfiet technology APP and IT website technology.
POLYtrust ® will enable you to print onto both porous, non porous and edible substrates enabling you to target the broader packaging industry.
Unlike the majority of competitors offering ant-counterfeit solutions, and there are many, Digital Ink Technologies Pty Ltd offers a “one stop shop” solution by offering POLYtij ® HP thermal printers & inks.
An important element of POLYtrust ® is that we offer no “cost per scan” for our anti-counterfeit technology if POLYtij ® printers & inks are utilised in the process. Other anti-counterfeit suppliers charge significant license fees, cost per scans and annual website fees that can be as high as USD$30,000 per annum and upwards depending on the volume of products scanned per annum.
Thus Digital Ink Technologies Pty Ltd can offer Growers , Wholesalers and retailers a complete marketing and identification solution.
For more information, contact us today!
Counterfeit pharmaceuticals are a major problem for the proprietary pharmaceutical industry. Counterfeits cause loss of revenues, damage reputations, and pose significant health risks to consumers. They also pose indirect costs to society as counterfeiting often supports organised crime. Various factors including the high cost of proprietary drugs, the ease of producing counterfeits, the lack of risk in counterfeiting relative to other illegal activities, and the increased use of the Internet as a source for marketing pharmaceuticals have encouraged counterfeit proliferation.
Over the last year, counterfeit pharmaceuticals generated $75 billion in revenue and caused over 1,000,000 preventable deaths a year. Much of the counterfeit market exists in third world countries where traceability is limited and price sensitivity is high. In these markets, counterfeiters purposely target lifesaving drugs such as anti-malarial pills due to their high prices.
Counterfeiting in developed markets is much less prevalent but still, poses a significant threat due to the higher consumption of drugs and the increasing use of the internet as a source in these markets. The WHO found 50% of online pharmacies that conceal their physical address were found to be providing counterfeits.
Federal regulators, international task forces, NGOs, and pharmaceutical manufacturers have attempted to stem the tide of counterfeits through regulations, tracking systems, tamper-proof bottles, holographic labelling, unique inks, quick tests, and random assays, all have their faults. Tracking systems are expensive, adding as much as 8-10% to manufacturing cost, and drugs purchased over the internet are difficult to trace via these means.
Assays for active drug components take time and can be confounded when counterfeiters add diluted doses of the active ingredients. Visible mechanisms of identifying products can be duplicated; in some cases, the holograms of counterfeits were found to be more complex and detailed than the holograms of a legitimate product. Moreover, counterfeiters often recycle legitimate packaging and replace its contents with counterfeit products.
SECUR belong to a class of anti-counterfeiting products known as “tracers” or “taggants”. Tracers/taggants are unique micro-sized particles that are added onto or within the proprietary products they are trying to protect as a means of differentiating them from counterfeits or generics. What makes SECUR Tracers unique, however, is the fact that they are comprised of food/pharmaceutical grade materials and don’t require the use of an expensive and proprietary reader.
SECUR Tracers consist of a food and pharmaceutical grade polymer with embedded iron powder and food dye. Each particle is 100-200 microns or smaller in size with micro-engraved lettering 10-20 microns in size. All materials used to make SECUR Tracers are GRAS (generally regarded as safe) and relatively chemically inactive. The particles can be included in/on pills, capsules, packaging and labels.
Instant identification of the tracer is possible using a black light, as this will cause the embedded food dye to fluoresce. To confirm the authenticity of the product, the pills are then read under an inexpensive 120x power microscope. This process takes about 30 seconds. Each particle may include a company name and/or other identifying information (i.e. lot number, production date, expiration information). The SECUR Tracers can be formulated into the coating of a pill. To confirm the pill’s authenticity, the tracers are located using a black light and then read under a microscope.
SECUR is an acronym standing for “safe”, “easy”, “customizable”, “useful”, and “reliable”. They have numerous advantages over alternate anti-counterfeiting technologies:
SAFE FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION
All the materials formulated in the tracers are GRAS (generally regarded as safe) and permitted in foods/pharmaceuticals. They consist of relatively inactive compounds unlikely to affect the active components of the pills they are included in or on. They can be included in the pills themselves, in the coating of pills, and/or outside the container on the labelling/packaging.
EASY TO IDENTIFY
SECUR Tracers are magnetically retrievable and simple to read. They are detected by shining a Black UV light on the coating of pills containing the tracer and read using a simple handheld microscope. The test can be completed within 30 seconds.
CUSTOMISABLE MESSAGE
SECUR Tracers can be engraved with almost any letter, number, or symbol. Templates for characters on the tracers can be changed regularly and at a low cost. Moreover, the size of SECUR Tracers can be customised to fit a client’s needs. The particles can be as small as 50 microns in size (to maximise the number of tracer particles per gram of tracer) or as large as 300 microns in size (to increase the amount of information engraved on each particle).
USEFUL FOR VARIETY OF PURPOSES
In addition to their application as an anti-counterfeiting mechanism, SECUR Tracers can be used to differentiate proprietary products from generics, identify “gray market sales” (i.e. product purchased in lower priced markets and resold into higher priced markets), validate returned products, verify batch/lot information, and determine medication non-adherence (since tracers are not digestible).
RELIABLE AND PROTECTED
Manufacturing of SECUR tracers requires specialised semiconductor equipment and a variety of technical skills. These pose high barriers to entry for potential counterfeiters. Additionally, Micro-Tracers can embed ‘secret’ coding materials into the matrix of the tracers that would be virtually impossible for counterfeiters to identify and replicate.
Food And Drug Administration (FDA) issued a document “Guidance for Industry: Incorporation of Physical-Chemical Identifiers into Solid Oral Dosage Form Drug Products for Anticounterfeiting” (2009). In the document, the FDA provides recommendations for which “identifiers” to use and guidance regarding regulations of such identifiers.
They recommend that the identifiers be comprised of “food substances that are generally recognised as safe (GRAS)”, “be pharmacologically inactive”, and “not adversely affect the identity, strength, quality, purity, potency, of bioavailability of ”. If a PCID meets these criteria, as SECUR Tracers are designed to do, drug manufacturers would not need prior approval from the FDA for inclusion of the PCID.
In addition, manufacturers are to be given discretion as to whether they want to label products as containing identifiers or keep their use covert. Companies will have to document the identifier’s chemical composition, how it will be incorporated into the medicine, at what concentration, and show the identifier does not alter the product’s biological behaviour in any way.
Click here to download the SECUR Microtracers flyer.
This article was orginally published on fastmoving.co.za
To kick off this year’s series of Laser Top Tips, Tracepack have an interesting application using the Linx SLHP laser to code onto pig skin.
Laser brings many benefits to this application, such as legible traceability and reduced risk of contamination. In most countries it is a requirement to mark on animal carcasses at points during the meat production process. Traditionally this has been done by branding or ink marks; however this does not often create a legible mark.
Lasers offer a precise non-contact hygienic solution, making permanent readable marks; this can help reduce contamination in the food process.
Please click here to view the benefits of the Linx SLHP for the food industry.
Below are the keys functions of pharmaceutical packaging:
Containment – The containment of the product is the most fundamental function of packaging for medicinal products. The design of high-quality packaging must take into account both the needs of the product and of the manufacturing and distribution system. This requires the packaging: not to leak, nor allow diffusion and permeation of the product, to be strong enough to hold the contents when subjected to normal handling and not to be altered by the ingredients of the formulation in its final dosage form.
Protection – The packaging must protect the product against all adverse external influences that may affect its quality or potency, such as light, moisture, oxygen, biological contamination, mechanical damage and counterfeiting/adulteration.
Presentation and information – Packaging is also an essential source of information on medicinal products. Such information is provided by labels and package inserts for patients.
Identification – The printed packs or its ancillary printed components serves the functions of providing both identity and information.
Convenience – The convenience is associated with product use or administration e.g., a unit dose eye drop which both eliminates the need for preservative and reduces risks associated with cross infection, by administering only a single dose.
In the UK 49% of their consumers find tamper proof labels a nuisance. African consumers appreciate the technology and see tamper-proof labelling as a necessity. Brand owners operating in Africa rely heavily on tamper-proof technology to ensure that contents of the packaging are safeguarded against counterfeiting. Without compromising the brand identity, tamper proof label technology has to evolve to keep ahead of the growing illicit trade. Arca anti-counterfeit labels are designed not only to ensure an original look for products but also provide package traceability, effectively countering sales fraud and illicit distribution.
When the standard is not enough
Illicit distribution is a well organised, tech-driven and growing industry. It is estimated that 10 of the most common foods consumed are faked to one or the other degree. Whether it is the entire product that is faked or parts of the product substituted by fake components, the fake food phenomenon is growing fast.
Through Arca’s African distribution network and experience in the labelling industry, it has become apparent that brand owners are looking for labelling solutions beyond the norm. Standard of the shelf tamper-proof solutions is adequate enough to fight the battle against highly developed tech-savvy criminals. With Arca’s use of specialised technology and materials, and in some cases cutting edge traceability software, it is now possible to counter a variety of illicit activities:
TracePack is the licensed African distributed of Arcas’ and specialises in the sale of equipment to mark, code or label any products. What sets TracePack apart from our competition is that we provide a solution from the exit of filler flow wrapper, or form fill & seal machines to palletisation. Technically, we can convey it, code it, mark it, track it, scan it, verify and authenticate it.
Other key differentiating factors about TracePack
Our company’s inkjet and coding systems feature low running and maintenance costs, resulting in a cost-effective solution to FMCG coding. Being the first to bring a 16-head thermal inkjet printer to the African market, gives us the leading edge in experience and problem-solving ability. Our wide range of labellers and print and apply systems ensure that we are able to take care of our clients’ end-to-end marking, identification and coding needs.
When brands are looking for a tamper-proof labelling solution that is above standard, TracePack can assist with customised solutions such as conveyors and customise marking, coding and labelling systems to ensure seamless integration into production lines.
For further information on TracePack click here
Market leaders and experts in marking, identification, traceability, automation and authentication systems & solutions. Visit the Mitas website
Unit 54
Design Boulevard
Northlands Deco Park
New Market Road
Northriding
Johannesburg
2169
+27 10 020 7220