Convenience, food safety driving smart packaging market

The penetration of smart packaging in the food and beverage sector is currently very low, says NanoMarkets, a research firm.

It attributes the jump in growth to changing consumer patterns -- especially greater health consciousness -- a demand for easy-to-cook meals, changes in demographics, an increasing use of anti-counterfeit techniques and the need to ensure the freshness and usability of packaged foods.

In fact the smart packaging market will be dominated by the food and beverage sector. This growth partially reflects the availability of reasonably priced smart packaging solutions that can address urgent freshness and safety issues. It also reflects the fact that almost 60 per cent of the entire packaging industry is made up by food and beverage packaging.

Overall, the global smart packaging market will grow to $4.8 billion in 2011 and reach $14.1 billion in 2013, according to NanoMarkets.

"For brand manufacturers, smart packaging opens the prospect of making a brand identity through the use of high-tech features,"​ the firm says in a newly released research report. "In these ways, demand for smart packaging can be seen as coming not only from the end-user segment but also from retailers, brand-manufacturers and government agencies."​

Technology suppliers and all in the value chain will have to work hard, however, to keep costs low and increase consumer awareness of what is available from smart packaging, the firm stated. Cost will certainly be their greatest challenge.

Freshness systems are the most important application area for smart packaging in the sector. Several kinds of smart packaging are currently available.

These include freshness indicators, which are smart labels that indicate the freshness of food through some kind of color change. Although not widely used at the present time, NanoMarkets expects that manufacturers will soon start lowering the cost of such systems.

Technological improvements are also needed and expected. For example RipeSensep, one fruit freshness system, only works with pears.

Other kinds of smart label serve as time-temperature indicators (TTIs). The technology is finding increasing use in supply chains for foods that are highly temperature sensitive.

Among the smart packaging solutions for freshness, TTIs are expected to witness the sharpest growth in sales in the next five years. TTI manufacturers will need to work to bring down cost and increase consumer awareness to make the technology viable.

"But there is also the issue of the optimal integration of TTIs into the existing supply chains and distribution channels, and of the accuracy of the TTIs themselves,"​ NanoMarkets says.

Current TTIs providers include Bioett, Timestrip, KSW Microtec, Infratab TempTime, Information Mediary, 3M and Vitsab.

The use of temperature control packaging is another related area that is making inroads in the food and beverage markets. NanoMarkets notes that many firms have attempted to enter this part of the smart packaging market,.

These companies have not been especially successful, in part because consumers see self-heating and self-cooling packages as luxury items and do not buy them in sufficient volumes for market takeoff.

Several companies are using smart packaging in this way, including Campbell with its self-heating soup and MeaWestvaco's NanoCool packaging system

Another growth area is anti-pathogen packages that detect and warn the user of the presence of serious bio-contamination.

These are likely to prove attractive in an environment in which consumers are nervous about avian flu and mad cow disease, NanoMarkets predicts.

"However, providing cost effective anti-pathogen packaging that can detect more than one kind of pathogen is currently a major challenge, although it has attracted the attention of a few firms,"​ the report stated.

Other uses will address the increased demand for food security -- specifically anti-counterfeiting measures and tamper-proof packaging.

Counterfeiting in the food and beverage sector is on a sharp rise, the firm noted. The most common anti-counterfeiting measures are based on unique holographic authentication features or secondary image labels.

While these are effective for a short period until counterfeiters find a way to get round such barriers. As a result, new track and trace applications are being applied in packaging using RFID technology. Firms involved in this part of the market include 3M.

"Tamper proof packaging is also seen as a solution here and this is an area where there is a considerable amount of research going on, some involving color changing dyes and electronic detection methods,"​ NanoMarkets reports. "However, high cost poses significant limitation for the wide-spread acceptance of such products."​

Firms involved with novel tamper proof solutions include 3M, Letica, Crown Holdings, CSIRO and Cypak.

NanoMarkets says the arrival of a broad range of printable electronics technologies are making smarter packaging possible.

"Only printing can deliver sophisticated electronic capabilities to packaging at a price that makes next generation economically viable,"​ the company stated.

RFID, scaled down OLED displays and light, sensors, thin film batteries and photovoltaics are among the printable technologies that will be used in packaging to make products healthier, more secure, longer lasting, easier to use and more aesthetically appealing, the company forecasts.

However, critical to this success will be printable electronics making good on its promise to deliver an RFID tag in the one cent range. Significant improvements in the ability of printing machines to create RFIDs in high volume and print them on a wide variety of substrates will be key to achieving the price target.

In the past, the evolution of smart packaging has been hampered by the lack of small low-cost power sources. NanoMarkets claims that help is coming from three sources: piezoelectric materials, organic photovoltaics and thin film batteries. As these technologies mature and fall in price, the power will be there to drive lights, sensors, displays and active RFIDs in the latest generation of smart packaging technology.

NanoMarkets believes that in the future, smart materials will have an important impact on smart packaging technology.

Thermochromic inks will be used to show when an optimal or dangerous temperature has been reached. Shape memory alloys will control the opening and closing of packages depending on environmental conditions. Piezoelectric materials will provide power for lighting and audio features on packaging, and smart adhesives can be used in conjunction with smart labels to ensure freshness through color changes.

Smarter packaging could also mean fewer fakes, the report stated.

An International Chamber of Commerce estimate found that in 2003 counterfeit goods worldwide accounted for eight per cent of the total world trade.

NanoMarkets believes this is a tremendous opportunity for smart packaging, noting that a combination of RFID authentication at point of sale, security inks and other smart packaging approaches will make a major contribution to combating counterfeiting, especially in the food, beverage and pharmaceutical sectors.