Brand owners are increasingly concerned about the potential of product smuggling and counterfeiting as product supply chains have become fully worldwide. While some products are tampered with or completely replaced with counterfeit goods, diverted products can result in lost revenue. The protection of the supply chain is crucial to preserving income streams, preserving public health, and supporting brand integrity in the face of the threat of illicit activities.
Flexible packaging materials, such as foils, bags, pouches, shrink sleeves, and roll fed labels, can be used to safeguard items, and uphold brand integrity by using security inks and integrated systems.
Putting Ink to Work
Utilizing security inks may make packaging work for your brand, especially with flexible packaging materials, even though the use of commodity inks for simple package printing or complex brand design is nothing new. Inks are useful for more than simply aesthetic purposes; they offer complete packaging protection and work with a variety of substrates for printing.
To protect packages and individual units from unauthorized duplication or modification, security inks can be simply integrated into flexible packaging components that are already in use. These inks provide overt, covert, and forensic levels of protection. Security inks' effects cannot be digitally duplicated, and many inks can be used to increase security. Inks are adaptable, offering protection to the full surface or just the specific areas that require it.
Product authentication using ink technology is straightforward and effective. Security inks can be simply incorporated into packaging design using ordinary printing methods and are frequently more affordable than alternative security solutions, which may necessitate significant packaging redesigns. This is done without losing design or aesthetics.
Options in Security Inks
When it comes to how the general public uses ink features, overt security features like color-shifting inks are simple for customers to utilize to verify a product's authenticity. The most common human senses used to authenticate these inks are sight and touch. For instance, when viewed from different perspectives, color-shifting inks provide an evident color-shift. This shift offers a quick and easy solution to securely certify packaging and is instantly recognizable. Iridescent and metallic inks are simple, overt security elements that additionally add a beautiful element to package design.
Inks with covert or semi-covert qualities may be used to provide further packaging protection. Investigators, agents, or someone with some amount of knowledge or training authenticate these inks since they are aware of the features to look for. The verification is aided by simple tools like polarized filters and ultraviolet (UV) lights.
Hand-held detectors are used for covert features; no human judgment is needed. By detecting the presence or absence of the machine-readable feature, these machine-readable inks are confirmed. Since these detectors are made specifically for each organization and are not sold commercially, they provide further security against counterfeiters.
A comprehensive multi-layered security system using overt and covert protection, given that today's counterfeiters are extremely adept and capable of duplicating the majority of packaging down to intricate details, is required to protect your clients.
You may create visually beautiful, highly secure flexible packaging solutions that can be certified by various organizations using various techniques by adding security inks early in the design process. This will make sure that your brand owners are satisfied with the lower rates of lost goods and possible income growth.