Traceability: Giving every product an authentic identity
Traceability creates a value-adding and differentiating opportunity for package printers who are willing to invest in the necessary capabilities.
June 2008 by Elliott Grant
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Counterfeiting, diversion, and contamination of products are big, “burning platform” problems. The results of a recent Purchasing Magazine survey show that 42 percent of buyers consider counterfeiting a “serious problem,” and 44 percent report falling victim to counterfeiting. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) estimates counterfeiting costs brand owners $200 billion annually.
The food industry was hit hard by a series of recent contamination issues. The U.S. spinach market was down about 40 percent a year after E. coli killed three and sickened 200. A recent survey of U.S. households found that 88 percent of consumers would buy a traceable product in preference to one that wasn’t—and 55 percent would pay a premium for the feature.
Traceability is the capacity to determine the specific source of a particular product at the lowest practical level of packaging, and to provide visibility to specific information (e.g., lot, date, origin, harvest crew, ingredients, safety, or recall status). Why is this useful? The information can quickly tell the person querying the package or product what it is, where it came from, whether it is subject to a recall or other security issue, when it was packed or manufactured and, in some cases, where the product was supposed to be shipped to (and therefore, whether it’s in the correct location).
Traceability is now a hot topic in industries that are mainstays of the package and label printing business. Guidelines are being drawn up to determine the source of origin, as well as safety information for a wide range of fresh produce, fish, and meat. Additionally, the ability to quickly and easily determine authenticity and origin is increasingly important for pharmaceuticals, toys, electronic components, automotive, tobacco and alcohol products, health and beauty products, and consumer packaged goods.
Traceability differs from other brand protection technologies in important ways. Overt and covert technologies such as holograms, taggants, intaglio print, microtext, invisible images, and digital watermarks offer excellent solutions for authentication, but cannot distinguish individual items at a unit level and cannot carry or point to item-level data—something that is required for traceability. Examples include the ability to securely discriminate between a toner cartridge made on shift 1 versus shift 2; a melon picked by a specific crew; or where an individual package was intended to be shipped. In fact, traceability and authentication are complementary: a traceability code can benefit from being printed with copy-resistant technology, and the response to querying the code online or by cell phone can also guide the user on what authentication technology to look for. Another benefit of traceability is the opportunity to collect information from the market—and correlate that with production data. For example, how long did a product take to get to market? What condition was a product in when it reached the shelf?
The food industry was hit hard by a series of recent contamination issues. The U.S. spinach market was down about 40 percent a year after E. coli killed three and sickened 200. A recent survey of U.S. households found that 88 percent of consumers would buy a traceable product in preference to one that wasn’t—and 55 percent would pay a premium for the feature.
Traceability is the capacity to determine the specific source of a particular product at the lowest practical level of packaging, and to provide visibility to specific information (e.g., lot, date, origin, harvest crew, ingredients, safety, or recall status). Why is this useful? The information can quickly tell the person querying the package or product what it is, where it came from, whether it is subject to a recall or other security issue, when it was packed or manufactured and, in some cases, where the product was supposed to be shipped to (and therefore, whether it’s in the correct location).
Traceability is now a hot topic in industries that are mainstays of the package and label printing business. Guidelines are being drawn up to determine the source of origin, as well as safety information for a wide range of fresh produce, fish, and meat. Additionally, the ability to quickly and easily determine authenticity and origin is increasingly important for pharmaceuticals, toys, electronic components, automotive, tobacco and alcohol products, health and beauty products, and consumer packaged goods.
Traceability differs from other brand protection technologies in important ways. Overt and covert technologies such as holograms, taggants, intaglio print, microtext, invisible images, and digital watermarks offer excellent solutions for authentication, but cannot distinguish individual items at a unit level and cannot carry or point to item-level data—something that is required for traceability. Examples include the ability to securely discriminate between a toner cartridge made on shift 1 versus shift 2; a melon picked by a specific crew; or where an individual package was intended to be shipped. In fact, traceability and authentication are complementary: a traceability code can benefit from being printed with copy-resistant technology, and the response to querying the code online or by cell phone can also guide the user on what authentication technology to look for. Another benefit of traceability is the opportunity to collect information from the market—and correlate that with production data. For example, how long did a product take to get to market? What condition was a product in when it reached the shelf?
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Introduction to Security Printing