Smart Packaging Solutions for Beverages and Alcoholic Bottles
Active and Intelligent Packaging (A&IP) offer different factors through which drinks and alcoholic beverages become smart. By following smart levels, bottles can stand out from the shelf, brands can increase product life, improve customer engagement and consumers can verify the authenticity. This blog talks about different examples of beverages companies and explains how smart packaging allows them to stand out in a competitive market.
Smart Wine and Blue Whiskey Bottle
The concept of the smart wine bottle was first initiated by the ThinFilm who collaborated with G World, a global authentication company, powered by printed electronics (PE). In the 2015 year, ThinFilm Electronics designed Near-Field Communication (NFC) tag known as OpenSense tag to authenticate the contents of beverages bottles. ThinFilm interacted with Diageo Company to design smart labels for Johnie Walker Blue Whiskey Bottle. Initially, this OpenSensor Tag was made for drinks and beverages; however, the company further expanded its usage for cosmetics, pharmaceutical, and food items.
Like Blue Whisky Bottle, smart wine bottle also featured OpenSense technology to shut the stores of fake bottles. With this smart sensor technology, companies can ensure authentication across the entire supply chain, and customers can get a notification that the bottles were packed, stored, shipped and bought in their original vacuum-packed state.
Ferngrove Wine Group also deployed ThinFilm-based OpenSense technology for their wine bottles to ship sealed beverages throughout China.
Smart Milk
The purpose of A&IP is not limited to drinks and alcoholic bottles; milk brands are also using active packaging technology to increase the shelf-life. Agrindus Sa Empresa Agricola Pastoril, located in Brazil, doubled the life of shelf of its Letti-brand pasteurized fresh milk from 7-days to 15-days. The milk company has achieved this by integrating silver-based micro-particles including with bactericidal, antimicrobial and anti-sterilizing properties into the bottle’s polyethylene.
Another juice and milk pack company utilize 3-D additive techniques for making a smart cap. This smart cap is integrated with an inductor or capacitor tank that performs the function of a wireless passive sensor, allowing the companies to monitor the milk quality wirelessly.
China Greatview Aseptic Packaging, the largest supplier of carton packaging material, collaborated with WeChat and Chinese retailer RT-Mart to design separately traceable milk carton embedded with unique QR codes on packages. It was specially designed for Selected Meadow Traceable+ milk products, ice cream manufacturer and other distributors.
Consumers of Selected Meadow dairy products use a smartphone to scan the QR code of packages, helping them to receive item-level information related to milk present in the carton.
Color Shifting of Soft Drinks
In April 2015, Coca-Cola Company started its integrated campaign by pushing colour-changing packaging and image recognition technology. Coke bottle’s labels change their colour according to temperature conditions. The main purpose of this initiative was to attract youth and engage teenagers. It empowers consumers to ‘‘come alive’’ after chilling the bottles to the optimal drinking temperature. The campaign also allowed consumers to take photos and receive exciting content.
Beer Forerunners
Heineken is a Dutch-based beer who adopted A&IP solutions to stand out from its competitive market. The Heineken beer, integrated with LEDs, shows ‘‘dancing moves’’ in conjunction with sound and movement. The beer bottles are also embedded with ultra-resistant PET that enables the beer to remain liquid under sub-zero freezing temperature. Apart from this, other beer companies also adopted LEDs, Bluetooth modules for bottles to engage customers innovatively.
Final Lines
The growth of A&IP is continuously rising due to the arrival of many products, low price and production of scalable techniques. The expansion of A&IP products also increases the interest of beverage companies. Consequently, different beverage companies are using active and intelligent packaging solutions to acquire customer engagement, satisfaction, transparency, integrity, authenticity throughout the supply chain process ranging from manufacturing to purchasing phase.
