There has been a lot of discussions centered on smart packaging in recent years, and with good reason. The ability to connect brand owners with consumers is a major benefit for both sides.

For example, YUNI Beauty founders Emmanuel Rey and Suzanne Dawson partnered with Thinfilm and Jones Packaging to integrate NFC tags directly into the secondary packaging of Shower Sheets and Chillax, two of its leading products.

“There’s a call-to-action printed over the tag location that indicates to the consumer that he/she can tap the package with a smartphone to see product details and access more information and content – much more than what we’re able to display on the box itself,” Rey noted.    
   
“With the direct connection, we can establish a one-to-one dialogue with consumers to tell our brand story, relay product information, provide application instructions, deliver news on other products, and give them an easy way to share all of this with their friends,” said Rey. “Our interactive packages – made possible by NFC technology – pull consumers in and help YUNI stand out among competitor products. We also believe that engaging with consumers in-store at the point of sale – through smart packaging – will help YUNI and our retailer partners drive conversion rates.”  

Scottish whiskey producer Kilchoman recently teamed with Thinfilm to promote two of its flagship whiskeys using special NFC hang tags that consumers could tap with their smartphones to get product and distillery information directly from the source.

“We were looking at ways to communicate Kilchoman’s unique selling points to customers and tell the story of the brand in the easiest and most effective way,” said Peter Wills, sales and marketing manager at Kilchoman Distillery. “This is very flexible, instantly being able to change the experience people have when tapping on the NFC label. As a new distillery doing new and different things in the way we mature and produce our whiskey, using NFC reflects this approach to marketing. We want to bridge the gap as much as possible between our whiskey products and the digital information customers can find.”

“Across the 13 European countries where the whiskey bottles with the NFC tags were deployed, data showed the smart packaging was 70 times more effective than display ads and three times as effective as email or search advertising,” added Matthew Bright, senior director of product and technical marketing at Thinfilm. “Based on this initial success, Kilchoman already has plans to expand their use of NFC smart packaging, including direct integration of the technology into the bottle label.”

“RFID has proven successful over a number of years for inventory control and supply chain management, with volumes in the billions of units per year. There are numerous publicly reported examples of this, including Marks & Spencer, Decathlon, Macy’s and Wal-Mart,” PragmatIC CEO Scott White noted. “NFC is also seeing growing success, with a number of successful rollouts, compelling case studies, and repeat usage. A few recent examples include Pernod Ricard’s Malibu ‘smart bottles’ and the use of NFC in the FIFA World Cup this year.

“More sophisticated non-RFID/NFC smart packaging is still struggling due to the cost and complexity of integrating multiple technologies,” White added. “However, we continue to see interest in areas such as illuminated packaging. Probably the highest-profile deployment this year was AB-InBev’s Budweiser ‘Light Up Cup’ for the FIFA World Cup, of which 8 million were sold across more than 50 countries.”

Growth in the Use of Smart Packaging

Smart packaging leaders report they are getting more inquiries from brand owners looking to use new technologies.

“We are seeing more inquiries for smart packaging, especially with regard to certain innovations, including the T+Sun Touchcode technology, which demonstrates that the consumer brands need some form of interaction,” Roy Bjorlin, global commercial and strategic initiatives director, Electronics Materials, Sun Chemical, said. “Newer innovations, including smart surfaces, are hoping to create the intimacy and engagement at the consumer level to improve the buying experience. Other innovations are on the drawing board. It is clear that this space will drive more and more personal connections.”

James Lee, director, Innovation Solutions Group for Jones Packaging, said he is “definitely seeing an increase” in interest in smart packaging.

“We just manufactured tens of thousands of products with integrated NFC for YUNI,” Lee said. “The NFC allows for customer engagement, marketing data collection and even convenient reordering for the customer. Jones has also developed pharmacist-filled blister medication packaging that we currently have in testing by pharmacy schools and some patients so we can fine-tune the product prior to launch. In this space, I believe that we will have a significant advantage as we manufacture the blister packs at very high speed and our solution will likely be cheaper than what’s on the market today.

“I think we’ve seen a lot of deployment of NFC being used for authentication, tamper evidence and marketing purposes in the luxury spirits industry,” Lee added. “I’ve also seen how NFC can be used to increase engagement significantly.  Think of the fact that the Absolut company has released 300,000 NFC enabled bottles of Malibu rum in the UK this year. I’ve seen implementations in cosmetics where printed electronics has been involved in retail merchandising providing consumers selection data at the point of sale or interactivity when they get home with video tutorials on how to achieve certain looks with the purchased product. In the pharmaceutical world, I believe we will see cold chain monitoring on the rise and potentially in high-value food and flower logistics.”

“This is likely due to the democratization of smartphones and internet for all,” Lee noted. “The other thing that is happening is that we are seeing brand owners understanding the value of data and engagement opportunities. Five or six years ago, the infrastructures and understanding by the brands have been a barrier to adoption. Finally, I like to call it enabling behaviors where things like contactless payment are making the act of ‘tapping’ more ubiquitous or the fact that no one knew what augmented reality was prior to Pokemon GO.”

“We see a continuous interest in smart packaging, in both smart labels as well as fully integrated smart packaging,” said Dr. Klaus Hecker, managing director of the OE-A (Organic and Printed Electronics Association), a working group within the VDMA, the co-organizer of LOPEC. “Several smart labels using this innovative technology are already on the market and are in mass production, such as NFC labels for authentication, anti-counterfeit, as an electronic seal as well as for customer interaction and brand enhancement.

“We see more and more smart packaging applications on the commercial scale in particular in NFC labels for customer interaction, cross-media applications and anti-counterfeit. Here hybrid solutions, as well as printed NFC, are used,” Dr. Hecker said. “It is expected that Internet of Things (IoT) will give a boost to smart labels. Printed electronics will play an important role in enabling communication between everyday objects.”

“Smartness has begun to gradually spread from the palette and retail display packaging level toward secondary packaging of more valuable goods,” Jani-Mikael Kuusisto, CEO,  Ynvisible Interactive Inc., said. “We see growing interest toward smart labels in particular, as our displays can be printed onto RFID and RFID sensor labels. Some high-end pharmaceutical and luxury packaging are already incorporating printed electronics.”

“There are a variety of examples of time-temperature tags in use today, and one of the early adopters of this technology was cold chain management for pharmaceuticals,” said Jason Marsh, director of technology at NextFlex. “However, as the penetration of these devices increases, costs will come down and likely we will see greater usage on lower value applications such as on food and household products. NextFlex has in its own pilot-scale manufacturing line in Silicon Valley and, over the past few months, developed a wearable authentication device with the help of NXP and US Army CERDEC that will revolutionize access to computers and connected devices for the Department of Defense. While this application is not strictly a packaging application, elements of the solution will likely find their way into the secure packaging of products and other assets in the near future.”

“Our initial volume products will be in the field of RFID/NFC – this has the most well-understood use cases and most mature downstream supply chain for delivering the complete solution to the customer,” White said.

The Future of Smart Packaging

With RFID and NFC already connecting with consumers, it is almost certain that more will follow, such as sensors and displays.

“Since most packaging is flexible and/or curved, the majority of smart packaging uses flexible electronics of some form,” said White. “For example, billions of RFID tags already use flexible antennas made from aluminum on plastic or paper. The benefit of printing is often less clear – the end customer doesn’t care how it’s made, only whether it has appropriate functionality, form factor and cost. Hence there is a need to focus on delivering against these parameters, regardless of the specific process technology used to get there.”

“Flexible and printed will likely be used in applications of wireless communication and wireless power delivery. At Jones, we can already print conductive traces that we are using as sensors, or we can print traces to connect to sensors,” Lee noted.

“Considering that we are in a world of rapid and even exponential change, I think we will see a significant increase in smart packaging,” Lee said. “As the consumer enabler behaviors increase, people will learn to interact with packaging in a different way. As we have larger volumes, incremental premiums will go down resulting in more products on the shelf with some level of ‘smart.’ We have to remember that the iPhone and our constantly connected environment is only about a decade old, but did we think the rate of change would be that rapid? Smart packaging may be one of those exponential shifts.”

“Printed, flexible and flex hybrid electronics lend themselves well to applications that have simple sensing systems, utilize wireless communication, and can be thin, flexible, and potentially stretchable,” Marsh said. “They are particularly well suited from a cost and materials standpoint for disposable applications. As such, they are well equipped to provide intelligent packaging that can manage simple sensing modalities such as temperature history, chemical sensing, UV exposure, impact, and other events. The ability of FHE (flexible hybrid electronics) to integrate at low temperatures and onto plastic or paper substrates makes it ideally suited for integration into smart packaging.”

Dr. Hecker said that smart labels are an important application field for organic and printed electronics.

“Due to its flexibility, robustness and lightweight character, printed electronics can be seamlessly integrated into different types of labels,” Dr. Hecker said. “On a large scale, printed electronics are also being combined with silicon electronics, thereby creating a hybrid system to enable even more sophisticated functionalities. When, for example, integrating a printed antenna and a silicon chip into a label, it is possible to add security features to monitor environmental conditions such as temperature or to sense gases.”

“New printed sensor innovations will be the key,” Bjorlin said. “Much of this will begin in the retail environment. Item level tagging at the retail level, consumer data acquisition and analytics will combine with innovations such as SunMotion, which is a new form of display designed to attract the consumers’ attention. This combination will become part of the system contained within the retail space itself to drive the consumer.”

“Sun Chemical is confident that opportunities within the material technology industry will continue to drive the development of new applications, particularly in the flexible printing space,” Bjorlin concluded. “Consumer interest in wearables, smart packaging, and new cost-effective displays will create a more interactive environment in the retail store.”