Smart Labels

In addition to location tracking, there are also applications for smart labels to address a historically common challenge in the supply chain industry: counterfeit products. Particularly in the pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, and cosmetics sectors, counterfeit products pose a severe threat to corporate reputations and consumer health. This challenge can be addressed with the use of unique RFID or QR codes to verify product authenticity. More covert features to tackle counterfeiting can be found in labels using UV ink, ink taggant, and infrared ink (particular used with pharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals). These inks are only visible to or detected by more sophisticated hand-held readers. Hidden measures such as these allow manufacturers to monitor and ensure genuine goods do not fall out of the authorized supply chain. Tying each product’s unique identifier to blockchain technology also achieves a new level of security.

For groceries and nutraceuticals, there is increasing development of labels which allow the supply chain to enhance product freshness and quality, including color-changing technology to clearly highlight item condition to businesses and consumers. Similar applications include assuring cold chain integrity and providing visibility of package tampering and damage. FreshTag labels developed by Insignia Technologies provide such solutions, with labels that change color if food experienced a temperature excursion, demonstrating that smart labels can more accurately reflect product condition than static use-by dates. A top priority for consumer health is to scale these smart labels for the quality control of perishable goods, ensuring any item shipped to a distant destination through cold chain operations still arrives in a condition that is safe for human consumption.

With sustainability and cost reduction high on the logistics agenda, companies are opting to print digital product information directly onto packages, eliminating physical labels. This so-called ‘no labels’ approach still gives consumers the information they need to make informed decisions and enables warehouse operations to easily identify products.

Lending itself to the fight against fraud, start-up PixoAnalytics developed a unique code-generating technology using paper art. Each envelope or package is produced using paper that has a unique and natural paper structure (referred to as its ‘fingerprint’) which is used for unique identification. Similar to human fingerprints, these paper structures cannot be reproduced. Applicable to any product, and without increasing the environmental footprint of regular envelopes and packages, this technology also equips logistics providers with a tool to ensure customer parcels are not tampered with.