Counterfeit drugs are big business, with the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO)¹ estimating the total value of counterfeit pharmaceuticals traded worldwide to be EUR 4.03 billion.
The impact of this on the healthcare industry is significant. This is where anti-counterfeiting measures help ensure healthcare professionals and patients are getting the products they need from the brands they trust – and it protects pharmaceutical suppliers from losing millions each year.
For companies challenged with protecting goods from fraud, it pays dividends to partner with OPM, a UK-based printer converter that understands the packaging and labelling requirements of the UK healthcare and pharmaceuticals market.
OPM supplies the very best in flexible packaging, labelling and anti-counterfeit measures to protect your business and your patients and consumers. We know that the right packaging or label solution depends on precise application and legislative requirements.
Read on to find out more about our solutions.
Anti-counterfeit PSA Labels
Pharmaceutical labels with an NFC inlay have a unique digital identity that can be tracked and traced online across the supply chain. Combining NFC tagging and blockchain recordkeeping can provide organisations and consumers with a complete, tamper-proof, and easily accessible view into a product’s provenance and journey through the supply chain. Intelligent labels like NFC deliver the added benefit of meeting increasing government and consumer demands for visibility into every step of a product’s journey – from source to shelf.
3D
Security 3D lenticular printing is a high-precision security feature that creates images with an illusion of depth, or the ability to change or move as the image is viewed from different angles on a security sticker. This type of feature can combine multiple anti-counterfeit technologies to form a comprehensive overt and covert solution.
Luminescent topcoat
This technology features materials with a luminescent top coating in either blue, yellow, or red colour. These colours are used in place of varnish to simplify processes and quality maintenance and when combined with dedicated TE adhesives, offers an additional tamper-evident feature indicating box damage, label damage or visible evidence.
Customised inks and coatings
There are several overt and covert ink and coating technologies that can be applied during the printing process to create an anti-counterfeit solution. These include:
- Colour change inks incorporating heat-sensitive thermochromic performance
- Shadow printing on the reverse of the face material – between the film and the adhesive – transfer tape
- Holographic foils, such as Cast ‘N’ Cure, can change one of the texts by a single point size which is unknown to the fraudster
- Micro text
- Photochromic inks – pale inks that burst into colour when exposed to UV light (sunlight or black light)
- The incorporation of multiple micro-perforations – assessed case by case to meet the application requirements
- Pearlescent varnishes with metallic effects
Taggant technology
Taggant technology combined in the printed ink is invisible to the naked eye and is only identifiable by a proprietary detection unit. The detectors can be programmed to locate a single additive or up to one hundred different combinations of additives. Testing has also shown that taggant additives exhibit a greater relative intensity, so less material is required to achieve the same degree of detectability.
Safety ensured – today & tomorrow
Healthcare and pharmaceutical suppliers can address their packaging requirements in the UK with ease when discussing their options with OPM.
Apart from ensuring packaging and label designs are compliant with UK regulations, the industry can also incorporate the best anti-counterfeiting technology to ensure healthcare professionals and their patients have peace of mind.
To find out more about how OPM can support your packaging anti-counterfeiting strategy, please contact customerservices@opmgroup.com
.
