Product counterfeiting through identical packaging design has been pervasive for many years.
All brands have to face this threat in their markets and suffer huge losses in their sales value.
The losses as per a recent study for a major confectionary biscuit brand in the MENA region was estimated at over 8 Million US$ / year and this was just the tip of the iceberg. The study also showed that contrary to popular belief that brands with higher market share face counterfeiting, but in reality counterfeiting is all pervasive and is estimated to affect upto 50% brands in any product category. The health hazard it poses to the consumers when a food item/ brand is under attack is another product liability risk altogether and this risk cannot be underestimated by brands in the age of social media. Governments in part or full lack the ability to enforce intellectual property or brand protection laws in many regions / countries of the world.
Companies and brands have long used holograms stickers as a method to protect themselves, but counterfeiters have been smarter and have in most cases caught up to this level of protection.
FIPCO R&D team took this challenge to help brands protect against this menace and developed special inks to use during printing of packaging material. This ink system is designed to activate your brand image / text or can even throws back a designed fragrance upon touch or rub actions by the consumer at the point of retail. This can most definitely ensure that consumer in buying the right product.
The cost economics of such innovations by brands is not even worth calculating, as the benefits far outweigh the incremental costs of packaging material. Besides, the brand value enhancement it offers by way of a highly unique USP in the competitive market place.
The COVID 19 pandemic has challenged all normal’s and has forced the entire human race to pause and re think almost everything. We have had to change processes and SOP’s in almost all walks of our lives.
One of our long term customer approached us with the challenge to develop packaging for a sachet (one time – use and throw) medical grade, pre-operative hand rub for use by doctors/staff in the OT. And, a uniquely designed stick swabfor preoperative skin preparation.
Team FIPCO realized that this small innovation had very high potential to save lives of our heroic front line warriors ( doctors and nurses) in their fight against COVID 19 and our R&D team immediately swung in to action. Through innovative thinking we not only designed the laminates, but also, conducted successful packing machine trials to get the product out in a short span of time.
We are proud that we are also playing our part and are keeping our front line COVID warriors safe by being able to give them added protection, under a new normal for the medical professionals.
