Smart packaging offers numerous benefits for everyone along the supply chain, from enhanced security through anti-counterfeiting measures and inventory management to the ability to communicate with consumers about the product. It is increasingly certain that smart packaging will become more ubiquitous in the coming years, with flexible and printed electronics playing a greater role.
 
“Smart packaging is no longer desirable, it’s inevitable,” Roy Bjorlin, global commercial and strategic initiatives director, Electronics Materials, Sun Chemical, said. “Data acquisition of buying habits is a necessity at the store level to compete with the digital shopper. Innovative ways to attract and enhance the consumer buying experience within the retail store environment is increasingly essential.”
   
PragmatIC CEO Scott White said that there are a wide variety of use cases, but the most common theme is the ability to uniquely identify products at the item-level.
   
“This builds off established applications such as RFID in retail apparel, which is already proven in the billions of units per annum, but now extends it to mass-market FMCG products where price and form factor (flexibility, robustness, etc.) are more challenging,” White continued. “It also leverages the growing use of NFC in smartphones, with consumer behavior evolving to expect more experiences to be enabled by just a tap of their phone.
 
“So in brief: For retailers, the key benefit is supply chain management and accurate control of inventory. For brand owners, the benefit is targeted engagement of individual consumers, in the context of their interaction with an individual product. And for consumers, the benefit is quicker and easier access to product-specific and timely information, both in the retail store and at home, delivering an enhanced experience at every point of interaction with the product,” White added. “Over time, we also expect increased integration of sensing functionality alongside the unique identification of RFID/NFC, providing an extra layer of information about the environment of the product. This complements and extends the benefits for retailers, brand owners, and consumers alike.”
   
“We believe that there are many benefits, but it would difficult to state ‘key’ as it all depends on how and why a smart package is deployed,” James Lee, director, Innovation Solutions Group for Jones Packaging, said. “ We do need to think about the three ‘P’s’ of packaging as Preserve, Protect and Provide information, where smart packaging has benefits in all three areas. So not necessarily ‘key’ but here are some use cases from different perspectives.
   
“In terms of Preserve, think of things like temperature sensors or food spoilage sensors as they could benefit all three stakeholders of the brand owner, retailer and consumer,” Lee observed. “If a retailer was using temperature sensors, they could determine if a cold chain food product leaves the needed environment as it could preserve potential food that would be discarded or wasted if we knew that the product was out of cold chain beyond its tolerance. For a brand owner, this could be good messaging to the consumer about food waste reduction, and these sensors could still be available to the consumer when they bring the product home.
 
“In terms of Protect, similar sensors could be embedded that look at shipping damage, but to us, protecting the consumer by providing anti-counterfeit authentication would protect the consumer, brand owner and retailer reputation,” Lee added. “But Providing information is probably the largest potential benefit: imagine that the consumer can use smart packaging to get more product information or updated product information that could be construed as both marketing and education. The provided information could be seen from brand owners as collecting data on consumer behavior patterns, or data for track and trace in the supply chain, the retailer could use the same technology to assist in inventory or self-checkout scenarios. As you can see the possibilities are endless and it’s hard to really pin down key benefits. Overall, this could be looked at as digitizing something physical which seems to be a significant need by everyone these days.”
 
“The key benefits are endless and are only limited by our imagination,” Richard Ellinger, VP sales and marketing for American Semiconductor, said. “Programmability allows labels to be tailored is the key benefit that users want. We are working with clients on smart packaging concepts that range from internal asset tracking, anti-counterfeit and regulatory compliance with consumer pre-sale and post-sale communication.”
   
“Packaging is crucial to branded products because the package is often the first opportunity for a brand to connect directly with a consumer,” said Matthew Bright, senior director of product and technical marketing at Thinfilm. “As consumers look to their smartphones to help make decisions and solve problems, interactive packaging is uniquely positioned to bridge the gap between the physical and digital worlds using mobile technology.”
 
“Smart packaging can inform the consumer about several things (e.g. temperature, usage, contents, etc.), can serve as a marketing tool (e.g. attractive design, cross-media, etc.) as well as can serve as brand-protection. Thus, a simple packaging can be transformed into an interactive object,” Dr. Klaus Hecker, managing director of the OE-A (Organic and Printed Electronics Association), a working group within the VDMA, the co-organizer of LOPEC, said.

“Think of one of the best smart packages that nature provides, the banana peel,” said Jani-Mikael Kuusisto, CEO,  Ynvisible Interactive Inc. “It perfectly senses and indicates several things about the state of the product that guides retailers and consumers on the storage, handling, use of the product in line with preferences of the user.
       
“With ‘smartness,’ packaging is going in that direction,” he continued. “Beyond the power of sensing and visual indication, smart packaging will connect products to online services and introduce functions that make packaging an even more integral part of the product itself. Smart packaging connects to major global trends of digitalization, urbanization, changing consumer demographics, and sustainability – where ultimately the aim is to achieve more value with less materials, less product waste, and less energy consumed.”