The world’s active and intelligent packaging industry has flagged 2016 as its breakthrough year, having seen an unprecedented level of interest from brand owners curious to explore new powers put in their hands by an incoming tide of sensor devices and code-based technologies that are overturning old ideas of packaging.
Packaging can do and be whatever a designer wants–react to light and sound, access websites and videos, integrate ‘talking’ systems that convert text into speech and translate into different languages, monitor health and athletic fitness and, alluringly, be a vehicle for a brand owner to get inside a shopper’s head and offer insight into consumer behavior.
November’s Active and Intelligent Packaging Industry World Congress in Amsterdam attracted more than 300 attendees including the biggest brand owners. Heineken shopped on home ground for a new smart bottle from the record number of 30 demonstrator booths and General Mills came scouting from the US.
“The connected package is the touch-point between the brand and the customer,” says Javier Gonzalez, senior director of international business at Digimarc. Digimarc technology hides barcoding in the graphic design and turns the entire packaging surface into a more accessible channel for brands to deliver consumer information, targeted special promotions and dynamic content. At the same time, it improves efficiency ‘dramatically’ at manned checkouts and selfscanning lanes, adds Gonzalez.
A Japanese daily newspaper saw high sales of bottled mineral water as a chance to address its dipping sales figures among younger people. The Mainichi News Bottle used AR technology to link the design to live news updates. In the States, Kraft Heinz is reportedly developing its use of ‘frictionless’ tools to give mobile shoppers easy access to in-store promotions.
AIPIA’s executive director Eef de Ferrante told Congress, “AIP is going to change the industry from an industry of wraparound products to one of tools for shelf life extension and communication with consumers.” Quoting Pepsico, he shares, “Those who don’t want to change will have to find another job.”
Smart packaging with a smartphone gives brand owners a direct line to a better understanding of consumers. General Mills brands have participated in a pilot QR digital labelling program sponsored by America’s grocery industry, and Kraft Heinz is exploring ‘frictionless’ tools to give mobile shoppers easier access to instore promotions and improve customer insight data.
But it could pay to look at other options before taking the leap into connected packaging and frictionless interaction. They come at a high cost and, depending on the underlying job to be done, smart thinking might do the trick, argued a keynote speaker.
“Smart packaging can be zero-tech,” says Tom Lawrie-Fussey, leader of business development at Cambridge Design Partnership (CDP). By printing a picture of a flatscreen TV on a bicycle box saved a savvy Dutch company losses through damage in distribution of 70 to 80%. The boxes are similar in size and, as VanMoof predicted, shippers handle a TV with more care.
CDP makes use of sensors in the early-stage design phase in evidence based trials. Several connected electronic platforms embedded or attached to packaging reveal how a user actually handles a product, in real time; for example, how a shampoo bottle is squeezed, tipped, shaken and stored and if the lid can be hard to open. Data analytics can be fed into a product redesign.
Hidden technology in a multi-component Gatorade Gx hydration system aims to improve athletic performance. A smart capfitted with sensors and microchip tracks fluid intake, lights up when someone needs to drink more and sends live analytics to the coach via an app. Each 30-ounce bottle has a pod of concentrated formula based on an individual’s needs, and a device to break and disperse the contents. First piloted with the Brazilian World Cup football team in 2014, it is now used by professional basketball and football teams across America.
“The year 2017 will see this expand to more teams and sports globally across Europe and Australia,” Kim Anderson, marketing director at Smart Design, lead innovation agency on the project, tells Packaging South Asia, confirming a plan to launch a version of the smart bottle to consumers in 2017.
prompts consumers to enjoy food
and beverages at their best
Heineken shopped for its next smart beer bottle at the Active and Intelligent Packaging Industry Association (AIPIA) World Congress in Amsterdam, where nine companies contested in a pitch battle to develop their concept. Nanomarker, part of Potsdam Specialty Paper, proposed forensic-level authentication technology for a game called ‘Find our Founder’, which involves integrating a 1200-micron portrait of Gerard Adriaan Heineken on the bottle label. SpeechCode focused on the brand’s international fanbase with an audio format that turns text into speech, voiced in different languages. Its serious societal aim is to overcome daily challenges such as reading a list of ingredients or compliance information
for medication. However, Heineken’s favored three to take forward in the selection process are a Constantia Spear digital display “that might open up endless possibilities”; one from CapTag Solutions that “could add smart interaction with the consumer”; and a concept from Rako that offers “potentially a multi-sensory engaging experience”.
“The brand is one of the least innovative in the world, instead creative with everything else around it,” says director of global Heineken design Mark van Iterson. A returnable bottle in the French market has a unique code so a user can read stories of previous people who’ve been drinking from it. He thinks this collecting of experiences and relabelling the bottles as ‘reforwardable’ “makes returnable bottles cool again”.
by Nanomarker integrates a microsized portrait of the brand’s founder
Italian olive oil producers in Tuscany are piloting OpenSense near-field communication (NFC) wireless tagging by Thinfilm Electronics, to stem the flow of fake products. Temperature sensing labels to launch in 2017 will target the pharma, fresh meat and fish, dairy and wine sectors, says Erwan Le Roy, ThinFilm executive vice president, NFC business development: “An assurance of quality for consumers that retailers can monitor and verify at the point of receiving whether the products were in the right temperature range during the total supply chain.” A new rollto-roll manufacturing line will increase capacity to five billion smart tags per year.
A temperature sensing, UHF passive RFID tag combined with a chemical reaction allows a reading after an event to provide both identification data and temperature history, a capability unique to TEMPiDENCE technology claims the Japanese developer, NiGK Corporation. A tag works between 30 and 60°C, suitable for pharmaceuticals, chocolates, wine and paint. An NFC version and tags with other temperature settings are on the way.
A device from Maxwell Chase Technologies is intended to extend fresh produce shelf-life by releasing a food-safe volatile antimicrobial into the headspace of sealed plastics trays. Trials have shown placement is important to achieve the desired effect, as food is liable to absorb the antimicrobial.
For maintaining healthy hydration, the Water.Reminder smart cap by Israeli company Water. IO can blink, vibrate, or sound an alarm when it is time to drink. The first commercial products in 2017 will be for bottled water and energy and sports drinks. Products are coming for use in the pharma market, to improve patient compliance.
The UWI elapsed time indicator label aims to encourage a consumer to use a product at its best. Changing from green to red, it can be calibrated to requirements from minutes or hours, to days, weeks or months, and the countdown starts automatically when the product is opened and can’t be stopped, explains Pete Higgins, founder and chief executive officer of Edinburgh-based UWI Technology.
A doubling of the number of demonstrator booths at the 2016 Congress compared with 2015 points to the sector’s fast expansion. Increasing interest from brand owners can only strengthen the inward flow of communicative technologies. But users need to proceed with caution, warns Lawrie-Fussey.
“Planning for the next 5–10 years of advancement is a massive organizational decision and investment. “We’re at the crossroads. Someone will go genuinely hitech, and I hope they will know what the gains are and find the most pessimistic person to convince,” he says.
The ‘connected package’ is reinventing retailing and changing packaging from within, making software developers key team members from the start of the design process.
