Cartons can play an important role in the fight against counterfeiters by providing the assurance that the product inside the box is genuine, whether this is an expensive perfume, a toy made with the correct materials or even manufacturers’ replacement brake pads. The quality of printing and recognisable brand colour were enough at one time. Now even a QR code which takes the consumer to a pirate website is not enough. Yet printed cartons can be the brand guardians through use of overt and convert protection.
Quality is the first gateway to protection, particularly if using hot stamped foils using the correct die, the correct pressure and colours. Then comes the application of security tags, RFID or NFC chips, or holograms. All are easily available to the right specification from China so in fact offer little real protection to the consumer of the brand.
Other security devices, say strings of DNA to act as unique taggants when added to an ink, will work but are not the instant check that consumers or retailers need as specialist analysis is needed.
The Vision & Protect group at Koenig & Bauer has developed other ways to protect the packaging around a product. These borrow from its currency experience where special inks, holograms, varnishes and textures combine to keep the banknote a step ahead of the forgers. Not all these are applicable to packaging, but some are and will satisfy demanding brands that their products can be checked for veracity.
This is currently a multi layered approach, from a simple instant check to a more involved interrogation.
Level one is called Aegis and is based on a Stegano image which is hidden inside the artwork and cannot be seen by the naked eye. This image, which can comprise codes or data, is applied via a coating plate by an authorised process. It is loaded into the press in the normal way, uses the standard varnish the press runs. When checked using the ‘a verification app’ a smart phone camera can capture the image for examination. A large green tick or red cross signifies a pass or fail. This well established as a quick check for euro banknotes rather than simply holding it under a UV lamp.
Koenig & Bauer UK managing director Chris Scully says this means that protection for packaging can become widespread. “It can stretch to lower value items because Aegis is not interfering with the printing process and the cost per item to be protected at print is low.
“We can see that can be quite a take up for a number of packaging printers to add value to the luxury goods packaging they produce.”
There is a register for printers that can offer the process as CP3 certified. So far a handful of printers are on this list along with their specialities, whether luxury packaging or pharmaceutical printing. Just one British printer is included to date, a company that produces a lot of packaging for the whisky and spirits industry.
The second level of protection is called Ovjera. This is about matching the product packaging to a database holding a record of the printed packaging. As the sheet is printed an image is captured of a specific part of what will be the carton. The image is logged in a database, including both the print and the substrate as the pattern of the flecks of fibre will be unique to that sheet. When being checked the image is captured and can be compared to the original on press, identifying the consumables used on the particular press for that job.
The data logged can go far beyond the yes or no from Aegis. This can identify the carton with data of where it should be sold, and when, thus tracking whether the products have been stolen or, while legitimate, are being sold in the wrong place.
Ovjera is built on software from Bosch Secure Authentication which needed a way to validate the vehicle components it manufacturers. This was used to identify the microstructures of each product. Koenig & Bauer has chosen to develop this for the luxury goods market.
As with Aegis, this does not slow the press but captures an image at the end of the production chain which becomes the reference image for that carton. A photo taken by a smartphone and uploaded to the database will be compared to the reference image for validation.
Koenig & Bauer says this will be useful for checking whether fraud has taken place with returns in the ecommerce supply chain. Returns fraud is on the increase.
