Interest in printed electronics technologies in smart packaging for supply chains like pharmaceuticals and fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) is growing strongly in Europe.
 
At the same time, however, problems with the development of the technologies are increasing as they reach crucial stages close to commercialization, such as scaling-up, integration and demonstration of both products and processes. 
 
“There is a real need out there for these technologies but a lot of challenges as well,” Alan McClelland, a printed electronics specialist, told a UK conference on smart packaging organized by the Centre for Process Innovation (CPI).
 
UK-based CPI, at which McClelland is head of integrated electronic systems, is one of Europe’s leading state-funded technology and innovation centers supporting advanced manufacturing development in sectors like printable electronics. 
 
A rising number of incubator and other start-up companies are locating their operations adjacent to CPI’s labs and systems development sites at Sedgefield and Newton Aycliffe in northeast England, establishing what could be the beginnings of a printed electronics cluster.
 
It advises its customers not just on the manufacturing of printed electronics smart packaging manufacturing but also on the importance of choosing the right applications and markets for packaging innovations.
 
“A big challenge is understanding and anticipating what are the benefits of different packaging products to people in the marketplace,” said McClelland. “You need to view the whole supply chain before you get an idea of the real commercial opportunities. You can make tens of thousands of a product to put on the market but you must understand first what are its best ones.”
 
Printed electronics is now able to provide a wide variety of functionalities, from brand promotion, tracking and tracing and quality monitoring through to per-item serialization and sophisticated bespoke solutions for high-value products.
 
Smart packaging based on printed electronics is now being used in several major sectors and applications – fast moving consumer goods (FMCGs), pharmaceuticals, food and drink and nutraceuticals, medical devices, logistics, and automotive and aerospace, according to McClelland. 
 
With FMCGs, for example, smart electronics can help throughout the supply chain in design, manufacturing, logistics, in-store activities, the consumer use of the product and recycling. “To achieve this (range of assistance), we need electronics embedded in parts and packaging,” said McClelland. 
 
The big difficulty with supply chains in smart packaging is the creation of integrated infrastructure. “The whole supply chain (needs to be) operating to deliver a product to market,” McClelland explained.
 
At one end are what he called the “enablers,” such as ink formulators, substrate producers and equipment and component manufacturers. They need “clear volume/value propositions to justify investment in products (and) processes,” he said.
 
Then there are the “implementers” in the middle – integrators/converters and packaging and design houses who require sufficient value to invest in technology solutions. Finally, there are the end-users, like FMCGs, pharmaceutical companies and retailers who need a market pull through added value to drive market acceptance.
 
CPI provides facilities for the development and scale-up of the Internet of Things (IoT), conductive adhesives and barrier and sensing materials, while it also tests systems for item-level tracking, environment and condition monitoring and wireless communication.
 
At its two sites in Sedgefield and Newton Aycliffe, northeast England, it has a toolbox of IoT facilities for the scale-up and volume production of components, such as for printing, patterning, coating and encapsulation, and for systems in design, integration and assembly.
 
One recent pharmaceuticals project in which CPI has been a partner with UK-based drug companies GSK and Astra Zeneca has involved developing smart packaging systems, based on printable electronics, to protect the quality of vaccines and other medicines during their distribution.
 
Smart labels have been developed for regular measuring of the effects of changes of temperature, humidity and other ‘shock’ changes in environmental conditions during transportation. In addition, they have provided a means for the instant reading and transfer of monitoring data, according to a joint presentation at the conference by CPI project managers Tim Marsden and Simon Johnson. 
 
Called REMEDIES –for RE-configuring MEDIcines End-to-end Supply – the project comprises a range of supply chain collaborations covering nearly 25 partners including material makers, formulators, equipment and component producers, integrators and converters, distributors, and pharmaceutical companies.
 
While its primary objective was to create a system to reduce the loss of quality during vaccines distribution, it also exploring ways of establishing an extended supply chain for gene- and cell-based therapies and improving authentication to combat counterfeiting, according to the two presenters.
 
The smart labels used in REMEDIES provide data logging for up to a month at intervals of 15 minutes with the data being retrieved by phones or readers through near field communications (NFC) for remote storage or access.
 
The system has already been successfully testing in initial trials on international shipping, Now it is being scaled-up with 10,000 labels due to be produced in 2019 through automated R2R assembly, Marsden and Johnson said.
 
In another CPI-based project, a pilot line is being developed for supplying customized inks and adhesives for high-speed production of NFC and RFID devices. “Substantial reduction in device costs is being achieved through formulated structured nanomaterials combined with R2R production,” said Neville Slack, project coordinator at CPI.
 
The main requirements of the end-user partners, which included NXP, a smart blister pack producer, detergents maker Henkel and German household appliances manufacturer B/S/H, were high conductivity ink coating €0.5 per tag and an adhesive with a fast cure of up to one second @ 80°C and also at a cost of €0.5 per tag.
 
CPI’s main contribution to the three-year project due to be completed at the end of t2019 has been to support the development of the inks and adhesives through small-scale evaluation, scale-up process to R2R levels and produce NFC tags and demonstrators for the end-users.
 
The European Union is currently funding R&D projects focused on helping companies through research, technology and development (RTD) organizations like CPI to bring printed electronics products from the prototype to demonstration stage so that they are close to being ready for full-scale production.
 
Corne Rentrop, project coordinator for InSCOPE, one of these EU-financed research projects in the prototype development of hybrid thin organic large area electronics (H-TOLAE) products, described to the meeting a range of the project’s achievements in pilot-line integration in printing, component assembly and post-processing. These included work on functionalities like full-covered LED walls, in-mold printed electronics in car dashboards and interactive media surfaces in elevators.
 
But the development costs could be “very expensive,” warned Rentrop of the Dutch RTD unit Holst Centre. Hence, a priority was not just to create reliability in a product but also to reduce its overall costs to underpin its commercial viability.