What exactly is smart packaging technology

[China Packaging Network News] With the arrival of the concept of Industry 4.0, food packaging has gradually become high-end, smart packaging began to enter the people's field of vision, to say where intelligent packaging intelligence, the most relevant is food safety issues, smart packaging Can detect the quality of food, or to identify the authenticity, to the greatest extent to protect the rights of consumers, to achieve product traceability.

Smart packaging market prospects

Freedonia, a well-known market research agency in the United States, once published a research report entitled “Active and Intelligent Packaging”, saying that with the continuous advancement of the aging population, the trend of the US packaging market is becoming more and more intelligent. It is estimated that in 2017, the market value of smart packaging in the United States will reach 3.5 billion U.S. dollars. In the next three years, its compound annual growth rate is 8%. The report pointed out that in 2012, the food and beverage industry is the two end markets for the intelligent packaging industry.

It is predicted that with the growing problem of aging in the United States, pharmaceutical packaging is expected to become the country’s fastest growing application market for smart packaging in the country in the next few years.

Differentiation of smart packaging development at home and abroad

In general, only the temperature-time history identification (TTI), the food growth indication (MGI), the photochromic indication, the physical impact identification, the leakage, the microbiological contamination identification, and the radio frequency identification (RFID) tag are used abroad. , DNA (DNA) tags are defined as smart packaging; and modified atmosphere packaging, antimicrobial packaging, ethylene adsorption packaging, oxygen packaging, self-heating / self-cooling packaging, odor adsorption packaging, aromatic flavor release packaging, moisture absorption Packaging is defined as functional packaging.

In terms of functional packaging, domestic air-conditioned packaging and aromatic flavour release packaging are still relatively mature; gas adsorption type packaging (hygroscopic, ethylene-absorbing, and oxygen-absorbing) generally takes the form of sachets, and the technical content is not high, but developed abroad. Gas adsorption packaging has been able to blend non-toxic adsorbents into the interior of the film resin; other functional packaging and many smart packaging are still almost blank in China.

In addition, in these smart packages, RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) electronic tags are a well-known area in the country. In the logistics, packaging, retail, manufacturing and other industries have more applications. Intelligent identification technology will be applied in some areas (such as pharmaceuticals, high-end foods), but China will not become a big consumer of RFID tags because intelligent identification technology has not yet entered the daily consumer market according to the consumption level of the general public.