Smart Packaging Speeds Up as Unattended Retail Returns: A Packaging Opportunity to Watch

Smart packaging is speeding up, and the business opportunities created by the return of unattended retail deserve close attention.

Source: International Packaging Information Network

Repeated pandemic waves have brought the once-hot concept of unattended retail back into view.

A wide range of unattended supermarkets are appearing, and about half of packaging solutions now include chips to sense and identify products. Retailers adopt this technology because product sales still face issues and needs such as anti-counterfeiting, traceability, online and offline marketing, and promotion. QR codes, RFID/NFC labels, digital watermarks, augmented reality, big data analytics and similar tools can address them.

Behind the buy-and-go experience are integrated systems such as portrait recognition, product recognition, self-service payment, big data analytics and blockchain. In simple terms, it uses computer vision and biometric identification, while cameras and sensors across the store track the movement of people and goods.

One of the technologies used in smart packaging can protect goods throughout the journey from production to sale. Applying smart packaging can also give companies more accurate market forecasts, more realistic sales plans, lower or even zero inventory, and easier product use and after-sales service. For consumers, this means more reliable goods, a more transparent production process and access to more product services.

Smart packaging is not entirely new. In its early days, it was mainly used for premium and luxury packaging, so most people had limited exposure to it.

What is smart packaging?

At the Smart Packaging conference held in London, experts offered a definition.

Smart packaging: within a package, a product, or a product-packaging combination, there is an integrated component or an inherent characteristic. Through that component or characteristic, functional elements that meet specific requirements are added to product packaging functions or embodied in the product's use.

More broadly, smart packaging retains basic packaging functions while also being able to sense, monitor, record and adjust information and functions related to the product's environment. It can deliver information to users conveniently and efficiently; users can exchange information with it, and implicit or preset functions are easy to trigger.

In China, smart packaging adds more relevant information to existing packaging technology and can be read by today's smartphones, the Internet and the Internet of Things. This gives packaging a large information capacity, so consumers can learn more about a product through its packaging when shopping and make purchasing decisions more easily.

Smart packaging can also incorporate innovation and add mechanical, electrical, electronic and chemical properties. This allows it to provide both general packaging functions and special performance to meet unique product requirements and environmental conditions. It is used in almost every product field, including electronics, food, beverages, pharmaceuticals and daily necessities.

The development path of smart packaging

Today, barcodes, QR codes, invisible watermarks, digital watermarks, dot matrix and other technologies have been applied to varying degrees on goods in different industries. As adoption deepens, brand owners and consumers are increasingly accepting them.

Barcodes are the earliest and most widely used form of smart packaging. They are common on food, medicine and other retail goods, making them the type people encounter most in daily life. A quick scan can retrieve related QR code information, a method now recognized by the market and widely used.

Smart packaging now places greater emphasis on interaction. It has created a new business model: packaging connects people, objects and places, and links online with offline. As the Internet, mobile devices and big data continue to iterate, consumer and brand owner demands for packaging are receiving more positive responses.

In this era, smart packaging has broad prospects.

With the implementation of the 14th Five-Year Plan, many emerging industries have flourished. Webcasting, distance education and unmanned factories have become important pillars of economic development. Internet platforms have become a key part of market development, and industries connected with them have achieved substantial success.

As living standards continue to rise, requirements for food, daily necessities, home furnishings, logistics and medical care are also increasing. Smart packaging has therefore become a focus of packaging industry development.

At the same time, smart packaging has strong functions in protection, service and information. Pharmaceuticals, food, daily chemicals and logistics are increasingly inclined to adopt it. Beyond extending the shelf life of food, beverages, medicines and other products, smart packaging also carries the responsibility of improving product traceability.

However, several constraints still hinder the application and promotion of smart packaging. First, the most serious problem in China's smart packaging industry mainly comes from technology, such as a weak research foundation for smart packaging raw materials. Second, building a smart IoT big data platform is needed to drive development. Third, cost remains a problem many companies must face.

Therefore, although smart packaging is the future of the packaging industry, truly popularizing it and unlocking more profit space requires more manpower and material resources for smart technology development. It also requires keeping pace with China's shift from industrialization to informatization and focusing on new smart technology trends, promoting mature technologies and reducing costs.

The era has arrived, and the Internet economy will drive the smart packaging industry to take off. Smart packaging technology makes goods and their packaging more approachable to consumers and makes human-machine interaction simpler. As the technology develops, packaging is increasingly becoming an extension of product functions and a carrier that integrates various innovative technical means. The wave of high and new technologies is pushing packaging to a higher level, and developing intelligent packaging is an inevitable trend.

This article is reprinted from China Packaging Network (pack.cn). Original link: http://news.pack.cn/show-379062.html