Tamper-proof security seals from Millipore
filtration products has been launched. The seals are one component
in a series of quality and security enhancements developed by
Millipore.
The company claims that the innovation will help customers maintain sterility and improve productivity.
Located on the outer corrugated package, the security seal provides visible assurance of intact packaging. If the seal is broken after leaving Millipore facilities, white adhesive is left behind displaying the word 'Opened' on the tape. In the unlikely event that a package arrives at a customer site with a broken seal, Millipore says that will replace the products at no cost.
The security seal is being used to protect a range of filter products manufactured by the firm. These include the compact Milliflex Plus vacuum pump, which is designed to streamline filtration steps during testing to accelerate QC sampling in beverage manufacturing.
Millipore claims that when used with Milliflex filtration funnels, the pump and Milliflex units comprise an integrated solution for delivering reliable, accurate results in high-throughput production environments. The company claims that automatic, hands-off filtration reduces testing time and that the modular pump head provides filtration device flexibility.
The packaging sector is also increasingly utilising new technology to better protect food products. Coating solutions firm Appleton for example recently formed a partnership with packaging manufacturer Rock-Tenn to develop a paperboard-based package with brand protection capabilities.
The new product, called Rock-Tenn White Label Security Board, features taggants and read-write threads in its face stock manufactured from Appleton's TechMark line of intelligent papers.
These taggants and read-write threads are part of the actual face stock paper itself. The taggants are invisible under ordinary light. But when viewed under ultraviolet, or black light, they become readily visible and allow for quick visual verification. In addition, the taggants can be formulated to create a unique identifying code.
These covert characteristics, which are very difficult to duplicate or alter, can be analysed and decoded by a handheld reader. Appleton's TechMark Vericam reader automatically identifies the taggants in the face stock and confirms the authenticity of the product.
This problem is something that food manufacturers are especially aware of, what with traceability legislation coming into force. Companies are increasingly turning to solutions that combine multiple security elements to protect products against counterfeiting.
When different manufacturing techniques are required to copy security features that have been used, this increases the difficulty of counterfeiting enormously. For this reason, French foil manufacturer Kurz has launched a comprehensive brand protection product range with many component combination possibilities, including a wide range of difficult-to-copy OVDs (optical variable devices) such as holograms and the high-tech Trustseal security option.
Kurz has also developed security features based on a complex, hard-to-imitate foil technology. Diffractive effects such as customised-design foils with continuous, ultra-fine geometric patterns, plain foils with multi-angle rainbow colour effects or single-image holograms are available from Kurz on transparent foil.
