By Tom Kerchiss, RK Print Coat Instruments
June 22, 2009 — Take that bag with the Gucci look and logo that the ‘out of Towner ‘has just bought from a street trader. Sure it seems a bargain, half the price charged by an up-market department store on Berlin’s Friedrichstrasse or Paris’s Boulevard Haussmann. The buyer may walk away feeling happy that the bag matches her shoes, and even if the product is a knock off and may only last a short time, why should she care?
However, would our hypothetical bargain hunter feel so good about her purchase if she knew that a migrant worker was being forced into gluing designer labels to generic handbags for a pittance; or that her purchase funded organized crime and terrorism? Would she be so happy if she was sick and bought medicine that was counterfeit – making her worse? Would she be so pleased if the food she bought at such a suspiciously low price was not all that it seemed? The answer of course is that she wouldn’t be happy.
Counterfeiting is far from victimless; it’s also nothing new. What is new however is the scope and diversity of counterfeiting, which is creating parallel markets in many product categories, negatively affecting regular markets, distorting competition and eroding consumer confidence. Jobs are lost as an indirect consequence of counterfeiting, state revenues are diminished, while risks to health and safety increase.
The quickest way to halt any market is to curb the demand that created that market in the first place. This involves greater collaboration among business sectors to share information on counterfeiting. There must be more programs to build awareness of the counterfeiting problem to keep the everyday consumer informed and educated, and a greater willingness on the part of governments and law enforcement agencies to enforce laws that already exist, including seizure of counterfeiter assets and profits.
In theory there are many ways to mark out the genuine from the fake – bargain basement prices are a clue, so too is the appearance of the packaging. In reality though counterfeiters are often sophisticated making a hurried evaluation of genuineness difficult for the unwary. For these reasons the smart producer and vendor should strive to ensure the integrity of the distribution chain and the reliability of their agents. Others, such as packaging manufacturers and their suppliers can employ a variety of technical tricks to build a ‘firewall’ against counterfeiters.
Packaging is the front line of defense when it comes to product protection. As such the packaging material industry has at its disposal three means of safeguarding product authenticity with numerous variations – and these can be employed in combination.
Printing technology
Printing offers a number of possibilities.
· Intertwined lines in a high quality resolution, also consisting of several colours – a technique known as guilloches.
· Micro-lines. These are even finer and in some cases are legible as text under a magnifying glass.
· Raster texts, producing a moiré pattern when raster’s run towards each other at a certain angle,
· Holograms, which can be integrated into primary or secondary packaging.
· Data matrix coding, consisting of an individual number, which can be printed in masked form as a data code. This masking is intended as a means to prevent tampering.
Ink technology
Ink formulators have developed special inks that can be integrated in with packaging. For example, coin reactive inks reveal a previously hidden print code once scratched with a coin. Iriodin inks can be used in combination with normal ink pigments. As optically variable inks they react depending on the viewing angle and feature different printed images.
But that’s not all. Thermo-sensitive inks change shape once a pre-programmed temperature is exceeded. Of particular interest for ensuring a product’s cold chain has not been interrupted.
UV inks can be tailored to reveal fluorescent features under ultraviolet light. Infrared inks, initially invisible to the human eye and can only be seen with an infrared camera may be worthy of consideration. Other options are more exotic and include scented inks, blended with a synthetic aroma.
Packaging producers and brand owners also can incorporate low and high tech integrated safety features, including RFID (radio frequency identification). Others may choose tamper evident devices such as the various security tapes and labels; strips that leave a visible mark that says ‘damaged’ once tampered with.
Using the many security options available, packaging can be made more difficult to counterfeit – but not impossible. Often when implementing a security strategy the brand owner may go for a layered approach, employing a mixture of overt and covert features.
Developments in security technologies are on going. Advances in material science and thin film coating techniques have created platforms for security label technologies. Furthermore, the sheer number of potential devices that can be used offer manufacturers the ability to create, what are in effect – combination locks. Patterned coatings for example, may be laid down in geometric, numerical, alphabetical design or as a company logo. This layer can then be flooded with pigment or can be metallised to create an opaque film.
When developing these products, the printer, converter, chemist, manufacturer and others involved in the production and use of these security devices, needs to know how the inks, coatings and substrates perform and act over time. How will the devices react under different environmental conditions (heat, moisture, cold, etc,)? How will they react when used in combination with other materials? Are they rub, chemical or abrasion resistant? Moreover the printer, converter or packaging line manager needs to know the most cost-effective way of applying product components, the coatings, adhesives, etc.
Custom designed systems such as the VCM (Versatile Converting Machine) enable user to conduct trials, monitor quality and performance and determine commercial and product process viability. Furthermore, small-scale production, often of specialized materials can be carried out economically and efficiently. The VCM, a follow on development from RK Print Coat Instruments Rotary Koater is utilized by many of the world’s leading Blue Chip companies.
Systems such as the Rotary Koater are highly flexible, offering users a selection from more than 15 different print head and coating technologies. With easily interchangeable technologies – hot melt, knife-over-roll, reverse roll, flexo, gravure, gravure-offset, rotary screen, and much more the Rotary Koater and VCM speed product development and can be configured to meet the most demanding of coating, printing and converting requirements.
For further information email sales@rkprint.com, www.rkprint.com
Source: RK Print Press Release
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