3P’s of Smart Packaging Solutions
Approximately 10 million fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) have been interacting since 2019, and this number will rise in coming years. It is expected that the volume of the global market will reach up to $48 billion in the 2024 year. The massive growth of smart, connected or intelligent packaging is due to the constant need and adoption of IoT products.
Active packaging and intelligent packaging are the two massive submarkets of smart packaging. Active packaging offers features such as moisture control, whereas, intelligent packaging provides constant changes and status of the product.
The opportunities and benefits of smart packaging can be explained through 3P’s of connected packaging; People, Planet and Profit.
People
Brands and retailing industries are constantly finding new ways to engage customers. Thereby, different smart packaging technologies are coming up with novel ways to achieve these goals. Some of these smart packaging technologies are as follows;
Near Field Communication
It is a communicating protocol that allows the electronic devices to transfer information over the distance of 4cm or less. Various patents developed by ThinFilm use NFC tags to achieve brand protection, supply chain insights and customer satisfaction. The utmost collaboration of ThinFilm’s NFC OpenSense and SpeedTap solutions enable the NFC-based smartphone to read connected objects and items through CNECT cloud-based services.
Hopsy has employed ThinFilm approach for their beverage market that helps them to embed NFC OpenSense Tags with alcoholic bottles, allowing customers to interact with the brand until the last sip of a drink.
Augmented Reality
Augmented reality technologies provoke brand owners to augment physical things with exciting and interesting content. Being a future of the digital world, AR permits companies to engage customers through experimental marketing.
AR startup from Blippar is an example of one such platform, whose studio allows the companies to build personalized application experiences for their clients. For instance, Cadbury, Kellogg’s and Nestle are using the Blippar-based AR experience to bring fun and exciting campaigns for their customers.
Unilever partnered with Blippar to build customer engagement for their Magnum product. Customers acquire AR experience through ARDPs (Augmented Reality Digital Placements), which means that devices don’t require any separate application. The application takes smartphone’s gyroscope help to present a 180-degree of ice cream coating, toppings and drizzles all around them.
Planet
According to estimation, approximately 1.3 billion tonnes of food are lost or get wasted every year. Among all, one of the basic reasons for this wastage is the improper storage of food which might be due to poor humidity, pressure and temperature conditions. However, smart packaging solutions can limit this problem.
Intelligent packaging technologies like Indicators and Modified Atmospheric Packaging are being considered as optimized solutions to avoid food wastage and to enhance the safety of food products.
Let’s discuss them in detail;
Indicators
Indicators determine the freshness, quality and completeness of food present inside the package. Indicators monitor the quality of food under the indoor atmospheric conditions to display the status of quality.
A UK-based company Mimica provides a temperature-sensitive indicator cap and label to monitor food freshness. Mimica Touch enables food & beverage companies to store food at the accurate temperature, helping them to limit the food wastage by informing the data at which your food gets spoiled.
Modified Atmospheric Packaging
MAP is a process of improving the shelf-life of food by altering the composition of gases that are in contact with food. A protective gas mixture is used as a substitute for the atmospheric air inside the package to ensure that food will remain fresh for as long as possible.
Bemis, Berry Plastics, Linde, Sealed Air are the names of modified atmospheric packaging companies, hitting different markets including food & beverages, electronic, personal care and health care essentials.
Profit
The demand for sustainable, valuable and innovative packaging will improve the smart packaging market growth. Big players and major companies are shifting from conventional packaging to smart packaging solutions to generate high profits and revenues. Besides, QR codes, RFID, IoT, and Blockchain are the frontend technologies that help these companies to further improve their return of investment. ScanTrust, ThinFilm, NXP Semiconductors and Magic Add are using these technologies to provide RFID-NFC tags.
You can check our previous blogs to learn more about these technologies.
By now, you’ve gained the importance of smart packaging solutions and 3P’s. Do you know any other benefit of smart packaging solutions? Let us know in the comment section.
