[China Packaging Network News] At the moment when the value of the economy is prevalent, the importance of packaging for cosmetics that have always been dedicated to "face engineering" is obviously not to be underestimated. With the popularity of e-commerce in the digital age, the informationization and intelligence of packaging have been put on the agenda, and this puts high demands on understanding and applying related technologies. At the 13th Personal Care Technology Summit Forum and PCT2016, which ended not long ago, the Packaging Theme Forum invited industry experts to interpret this.

New technology sharing of cosmetics labels in the digital age

Qiu Xiaohong, Label Printing Branch of China Printing and Equipment Industry Association

Markets and Markets, the world's second-largest market research consultancy, predicts that the cosmetics packaging market will achieve a compound annual growth rate of 5.4% between 2013 and 2018, and is expected to reach $32.4 billion by 2018. By 2018, the market for cosmetic packaging machinery will reach $2.51 billion, with Asia Pacific leading, followed by Europe and North America.

According to the statistics of the China Flavors and Fragrances and Cosmetics Industry Association, in the early 1980s, China’s cosmetics industry produced sales of only 350 million yuan, and by 2014 sales exceeded 200 billion yuan, becoming the second largest in the United States. Large cosmetics consumer countries. Among them, China's packaging materials market is close to 10 billion yuan, and China's East China and South China are the main production areas for packaging materials.

The development trend of the cosmetics industry in 2016 is mainly as follows: 1. Sustainability has become a consensus; 2. The organic market will remain hot; 3. The latest trend of DIY beauty products; 4. Experiential retail will become the mainstream; 5. The acquisition drama will continue Staged; 6, the market potential of the aging market is huge; 7, personalized packaging and cutting-edge technology. And these also affect cosmetic packaging.

Specifically, the development trend of China's cosmetics packaging can be summarized as follows:

◆ Comprehensive anti-counterfeiting technology continues to innovate

The traditional cosmetics label anti-counterfeiting methods are mainly tamper-proof labels and laser hologram label anti-counterfeiting technology. Among them, the laser holographic label anti-counterfeiting technology is based on the principle of laser interference and is made by the method of spatial frequency coding. The laser holographic logo not only has vivid images, but also presents multiple levels in space, which decomposes colorful and varied changes. Very high, it is a kind of anti-counterfeiting technology with strong anti-counterfeiting ability.

The use of comprehensive technology to improve the anti-counterfeiting ability of labels has become a new development direction of packaging anti-counterfeiting technology. For example, the combined information anti-counterfeiting technology is a comprehensive high-tech anti-counterfeiting technology that integrates image production technology, computer coding technology, printing color registration technology, special ink technology, and color recognition technology; since each related image selection and encoding is random. Therefore, the characteristics that cannot be deciphered are formed, and even if someone masters the encoding processing technology, the same logo cannot be produced, and the anti-counterfeiting effect is good.

In addition, the organic combination of label and anti-counterfeiting can create a new concept of personalized packaging. Label anti-counterfeiting should be used in the local part according to the characteristics of the packaging itself, such as the use of anti-counterfeiting technology behind the product label or only in the product manual. At the same time, the packaging structure design also has certain anti-counterfeiting functions. For example, the perfume bottle has a unique design, which requires high-tech and high-precision molding process, which increases the counterfeiting difficulty of the counterfeiter.

◆ E-commerce packaging to meet market needs

a) Personalized demand is more vigorous: Online shopping has put forward new requirements for packaging design and development, and also provides opportunities for packaging innovation. New or unique product packaging is often more popular with consumers on the Internet. In addition, the network products can also meet the individualized requirements of customers, and can customize the value-added services such as specific patterns or signatures according to the special requirements of some customers.

b) Secondary packaging/process development is preferred: due to the rapid acquisition of network sales, there is often insufficient time for product design and development; and for reasons of cost control, the existing resources of each packaging manufacturer are used for secondary packaging. / Process development is the preferred mode for most network brands.

c) Packaging and transportation are more secure: because when the customer receives the product, the packaging must be intact, free of deformation or scratched. The transportation mode and transportation environment used by e-commerce are more complicated and the uncertainty increases. It is necessary to carry out transportation simulation test, fall test, wear test and pressure test on individual product packaging to ensure transportation safety. In addition, e-commerce requires cosmetic packaging to have better sealing protection, and to ensure that customers get unopened products that have not been contaminated.

◆ Safety and environmental protection is the trend of the times

Pursuing the simple beauty of cosmetic packaging design has become one of the ultimate goals at present, and it is also in line with the low-carbon economic national policy packaging design advocated now. Therefore, the future development direction must be to meet the aesthetic needs of modern people as well as the environment. Factors that reduce the load on the global environment are conducive to resource and energy savings and ecological balance.

In terms of labels, reducing the size of labels, reducing the thickness of label materials, reducing the printing area, and reducing the total amount of ink are also powerful measures to reduce "carbon emissions."

In addition, unqualified packaging materials can also cause unavoidable harm to the safety of cosmetics. Once the packaging materials themselves contain excessive amounts of toxic and harmful substances, they may be slowly released into the cosmetics directly in contact with them, affecting the quality of the cosmetics, and thus causing great harm to the human body. In terms of studying the migration of materials in packaging, the standards for materials in national food packaging are a good reference.

◆ Packaging informationization has gradually become mainstream

The promotion and application of QR codes, RFID electronic tags and NFC tags provides a good information-aware carrier for packaging informationization and injects new life into the product packaging industry. The two-dimensional code has become one of the most widely used sensing technologies in the world due to its low cost, easy grading and scanning code, strong anti-interference ability of reading data, large amount of stored information and high confidentiality.

Multi-encrypted QR code technology (QR code) gives each product a global unique ID code, which realizes the “one thing and one code” in the true sense; through the production and circulation of products through professional equipment and mobile phones. Sales and consumption, etc., to achieve effective collection and monitoring of information, effectively achieve the full range of product traceability, anti-counterfeiting, anti-smuggling management, and the development of various marketing activities, while achieving the collection and analysis of big data .

Near Field Communication (NFC) uses the principle of electromagnetic coupling to achieve communication and energy transfer between NFC devices and passive electronic tags. The passive electronic tag is attached to the surface of the object or embedded in the interior of the article. The NFC-enabled mobile phone is close to the internal stored information, which is very convenient to use. A typical application of this technology is commodity anti-counterfeiting. There are many successful cases in NFC technology applied to commodity anti-counterfeiting at home and abroad.

Specific to smart packaging technology, Mr. Li Jun, founder of Innova Research, gave a detailed introduction in the speech entitled "Intelligent RFID-based Smart Packaging and Technology Development Trends".

Intelligent packaging technology can be divided into: time temperature display (TTIs); Sensor temperature and humidity sensors; RFID electronic tags; printed batteries; photoelectric, pressure sensitive, gas sensitive, humidity sensitive materials; conductive inks; conductive polymer materials, antibacterial materials ; contain fresh-keeping instructions, oxidation indications, etc.; barcode / QR code / other.

Different smart packaging technologies are different in functions and application scenarios:

Logistics: RFID, barcode, QR code, and others; covers the identification and tracking of food, medicine, clothing and other commodities from the factory to the retail point or end customer's entire logistics process, improving logistics efficiency and reducing logistics costs;

Traceability and anti-counterfeiting: RFID, TTIs, two-dimensional code, others; traces of medicines, foods and other commodities from the origin to the end users, support the inquiries of the origin and other information, trace back to whether the logistics process meets the temperature and other transportation requirements;

Connect to the Internet: RFID, barcode, QR code, others; scan the code with a smartphone or other handheld device to connect to the product database;

Detection and observation: materials such as pressure sensitive, gas sensitive, humidity sensitive materials, conductive polymer materials, microorganisms, etc., indications for oxidation, etc.; detect and observe the state of the drugs, foods, etc. in the package, internal pressure, etc. Whether it has deteriorated and whether the packaging has been opened;

Entertainment and advertising: conductive ink, printed battery, conductive polymer material; printed on the product packaging, can make the LED light on the package shine; children's food packaging surface with conductive ink to make small games, improve product appeal;

Others: such as antibacterial packaging materials to extend the shelf life, for outdoor heating, automatic cooling packaging.

Specific to RFID smart packaging technology, since the 1990s development, RFID technology can be divided into: low frequency LF (125KHz), high frequency HF (13.56MHz), ultra high frequency UHF (800MHz - 900MHz, 433MHz), and microwave (2 .45GHz, 5.8GHz). The main application areas are:

◆Low frequency LF (identification distance cm level); agriculture, industry, education, public utilities, others; livestock labels, pet labels, access control systems, punching systems, etc.;

◆High frequency HF (recognition distance 10cm level); consumption, government, education, transportation, health, utilities, industry, others; smart packaging, logistics labels, ID cards, subway cards, train tickets, asset management labels, etc.;

◆UHF UHF (identification distance m level); consumption, government, education, transportation, health, utilities, industry, others; smart packaging, logistics labels, asset management labels, book management labels, RFID positioning system labels, etc.;

◆Microwave (identification distance 100m level); industry, transportation, government, other; RFID positioning system label, electronic license plate, highway automatic toll collection system, container management, asset management, and so on.

So what is the change in RFID that is specific to packaging? Learn more about RFID smart packaging features: contactless identification, information encryption, and full-process recording.

◆ Non-contact identification: UHF can read wireless signals in the range of up to 10 meters, and can identify multiple tags at a time, thus greatly improving the efficiency of logistics, warehouse management, shopping mall settlement, etc.; label information is not open It can also be read in the case of a box; the poor working environment does not affect the reading efficiency;

◆ Algorithm encryption: The information contained in UHF and HF RFID tags can be encrypted by algorithms;

◆ Support production, management, logistics, retail and other full-time recording and traceability: RFID scanning records are transmitted to the control platform, which can support the query of the whole process of commodity production, management, logistics, retail, etc., and prevent other channels such as cross-border goods; It is also possible to trace the information such as the origin of the product at any time.

Currently in China, the RFID market faces opportunities and challenges. On the one hand, the development of smart cities supports the popularity of RFID in smart packaging, intelligent transportation and other applications; non-contact smart tags can be read from a distance, thus greatly improving the efficiency of logistics, warehousing, asset management, and supermarket management; Food and drug traceability is strongly supported by national policies; the development of mobile payment based on 13.56MHz technology will further promote the popularization of high-frequency RFID reading and writing functions on smart phones; active RFID in smart garage, RFID positioning, electronic license plate The application of other scenarios is further expanded.

On the other hand, RFID technology is still not perfect, there is a certain rate of misreading, which limits the use of RFID in logistics and other fields; technical standards are not uniform, the versatility of labels and reading and writing devices produced by different manufacturers; Lack of RFID tag information, smartphones that support reading RFID information are not popular enough; security challenges include counterfeiting, tampering, etc.; costs are higher than traditional identification tools such as QR codes. But the price of RFID has fallen rapidly in recent years.

Looking ahead to the future of China's RFID market, I believe that due to the rapid growth of RFID applications in smart packaging, UHF and HF shipment growth will accelerate; and UHF is growing faster than HF, mainly due to RFID smart packaging. The use of the logistics field is more extensive; the use of hybrid RFID technology will be more and more, because the system integrator wants to rely on a variety of technologies to mix on a card to reduce the rate of misreading; the price of RFID drops rapidly, NFC can read Mobile phones that take RFID information are becoming more popular, providing conditions for the massive use of RFID smart packaging.

In summary, many smart packaging technologies come from the innovation of materials and electronics, and more and more application scenarios of smart packaging; while RFID smart packaging has the characteristics of non-contact, high reading efficiency, encryption and support for full traceability, application The prospects are very broad; China's RFID market will grow significantly in the next few years, which will further promote the development of RFID-based smart packaging market.