Smart Packaging Solutions: Everything You Need To Know

Packaging has gained a lot of traction in the past few years. No business would have thought about designing a specific packaging strategy a decade ago, as it didn’t matter. But with the evolving generation and technology, investing in good smart packaging solutions has become important.

Besides, with counterfeiters and illegal activities going on every day, it is essential to have a proper first line of defense for your product, and intelligent packaging can do that for you. Today, we will talk about smart packaging systems, types, benefits, and much more.

What Is Smart Packaging?

Smart packaging, as the term states, is one of the rising solutions or technologies that deal with keeping packages safe and fresher for a longer period of time. It is a defense layer that ensures that tech-savvy counterfeiters won’t get through easily. Besides, smart product packaging solutions also bring tons of benefits to consumers and improve customer service as well.

Types Of Smart Packaging Solutions

When we talk about the types of smart packaging solutions, there are basically three that you will encounter.

Active Smart Packaging

Active packaging refers to technology devoted to more than just containing the items in the package. This packaging solution focuses on communicating with the items inside the container and showing results accordingly.

For example, active smart packaging technology is majorly used in fruit and vegetable packages. The technology detects the temperature, pressure, and other important metrics that show whether the contents are fresh or on the verge of rotting. It helps in knowing how different conditions can affect the freshness of the products and planning marketing strategies accordingly.

Intelligent Smart Packaging

While active smart packaging technology focuses on the content inside the package, intelligent packaging solutions focus on the outer environment. Simply put, it notes all the data, from locations, pit stops to storage points so that companies can easily track the packages and get real-time alerts.

With intelligent packaging, you would get immediate alerts if any of your products are tampered with, there’s some suspicious activities going on, or if an intruder’s in your supply chain.

That’s why you must invest in smart QR codes, RFID tags, NFC field tags, and other similar advanced technologies to enable intelligent product packaging solutions. Besides, the possibilities that these technologies can provide you for smart packaging systems are unlimited.

Connected Smart Packaging

Connected smart packaging deals with connecting customers with the brand.

To enable connected packaging, you need to use smart QR codes or any other similar technology on your product packaging so that the customer can easily scan and get all product-related information at their fingertips.

Once you start using connected product packaging solutions for your products, you will realize how easy it is to deliver all product-related information without hampering with its packaging design.

Benefits Of Smart Packaging

When it comes to benefits, smart packaging technology brings a lot in its bag. Here are some of the best benefits of implementing smart packaging technology in your supply chain.

Quality Control

When sending out food and beverages, especially fresh produce, one of the main concerns that companies have is whether the quality of the product will remain the same as that at the start of the supply chain.

However, advanced product packaging solutions resolves this problem within seconds. With the help of advanced technologies, we can easily increase the shelf life of fresh produce up to a certain number of days so that the consumer will get good items even if there’s a delay.

Besides, advanced packaging also ensures that the products are in good shape and condition, have met all industry safety standards, and are safe for consumers.

Real-time Traceability

Smart packaging makes it easy to trace products in real-time. As intelligent packaging allows using advanced technologies like RFID, ML, AI, etc., you can easily implement real tracking without any hurdles.

Moreover, a smart packaging system makes the supply chain transparent so that you know what’s exactly going on in the process. You can simply use smart QR codes in your smart packaging system and locate the packages at any moment of the supply chain.

Besides, real-time traceability makes it easier for companies to handle customer services and take immediate action in case of delays or emergencies.

Prevents Counterfeit and Theft

As counterfeiters are rising at an alarming rate, it has become important to take strong anti-counterfeit measures and protect your brand’s image.

With advanced product packaging solutions, we can tackle this problem and make it safer for consumers to buy your products. As intelligent sensors, hidden features, and tamper-evident measures are used in intelligent packaging, the chances of pilferage and duplicating your product become minimal.

Predictive Planning

Gaining customers is not a difficult task, what’s difficult is making those customers come back to you. Retaining clients can be tedious, but we can slack off some load with intelligent packaging.

Smart packaging gives you insights into places where the product stock is running low, where customers love your products, and where you need to improve your marketing campaigns to have an edge over your competitors.

You can plan your upcoming strategies and perform accordingly based on the above information.

Technologies Used In Smart Packaging

As stated above, various technologies are used in a smart packaging system. Here are some of them.

QR Codes

QR codes gained popularity a few years back and have found several applications. You can embed tons of information in a single QR code and use it for running your smart packaging system. It can help you track down the packages, alert you about intrusions, provide important details to consumers, and much more.

RFID Tags

RFID tags appeared at the same time as GPS technology, but the former found its popularity a few years back.

Currently, RFID tags are quite popular in inventory and warehouse management as they ease up the burden of warehouse managers. How? These tiny tags have the ability to scan an entire shipment in one go and provide all necessary information with high accuracy.

The cherry on top is that RFID tags provide useful benefits like less energy consumption, are pretty low maintenance, highly efficient, and much more.

Intelligent Sensors

Why should you use intelligent sensors in your smart packaging solutions? That’s because they can help you improve your customer retention and are readily available in the market.

For example, food packages get bad till the time they reach the end consumer, and are returned to the companies. To save you from such losses, you can use temperature and pressure sensors.

It will help you see if food packages were stored in optimal conditions, are in good state during the transit, and customers can safely consume them.

Intelligent sensors can increase the efficiency of your smart packaging solutions up to tenfold and provide excellent results.

Intelligent packaging is evolving daily, and companies are aware of the change. However, finding a service agency that can fulfill your smart packaging solutions and demands is quite difficult.

That’s why Sepio Solutions is here to help you. We have advanced solutions that can enhance your product packaging and bring in the results you desire. Contact us at [email protected] for more information.