According to a report from packaging consultancy Pira, the unnamed retailer is looking to test US-based SIRA Technologies' Food Package Sentinel System (FPSS) on produce, to identify and record if it has been stored in conditions that adversely affect shelf life.
The retailer, which operates in Europe and the US, will decide whether to pilot the devices in a matter of months. Commercial trials could be running by the end of 2004.
FPSS configurations monitor, globally track, interdict and report contaminated food in storage areas and market case for atmosphere anomalies. A line of heat-sensitive invisible ink is printed behind the barcode, and the ink heats up and blocks out the barcode when the product has been stored at unsuitably high temperatures.
When this happens the item becomes impossible to scan.
Pira quotes SIRA Technologies' president, Bob Goldsmith, as saying that a major advantage of the thermal barcode is that it gives retailers a history of the product's condition by providing evidence of where the cold chain has failed.
Certainly, more and more manufacturers and retailers see benefits in adopting intelligent packaging, and packaging that reacts to the environment is emerging as a prominent sector of this new market. For example, a recent project carried out by the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland aimed to develop an inkjet printable indicator that contains a reactive substance to signal if oxygen is present in a package.
The sensor can be printed onto plastic materials to identify package leakage and indicates the presence of oxygen in perishable foods that have been packaged in a modified atmosphere.
VTT attempted to incorporate a number of active and intelligent technologies into one package as part of the project. The initiative explored the potential of digital printing methods, novel diagnostic printing inks, coding systems and information networks for packaging.
The results achieved in the project have been used in the EU-funded Sustainpack project, which began last month. Sustainpack aims to create a new set of track records in packaging concepts based on renewable raw materials.
The project is being run by EC-Pack, an organisation within Wageningen University and Research Centre. The participants of EC-Pack include the Agrotechnological Research Institute, Wageningen University, Institute for Animal Science & Health (ID-Lelystad) and Netherlands Institute for Fisheries Research (RIVO).