Chromatic Technologies Inc. (CTI) and AIPIA member American Thermal Instruments (ATI) has introduced BlindSpotz™ a new, patent-pending, freeze-warning technology that can be printed directly on a package. If the temperature of the package drops at or below 32° F (0° C) a coloured symbol appears on the exterior of the package to notify the supply chain that product has been damaged.
Temperatures below 32° F (0° C) can impact products as diverse as fruits, vegetables, fresh fish and meat, flowers, agricultural products, ink, chemicals, solvents, paint, medical samples, vaccines, food home delivery and certain types of mail or freight, say the companies.
This freeze-warning technology can be printed economically on individual packages to help protect the brand and consumer of medical supplies and foods, while dramatically saving money by lowering product waste. CTI will handle the technical supportfor all on-package printing while ATI will manage the customer implementation of cold-chain monitoring and data in support of those opportunities.
Current cold-chain technology, able to record temperatures between 4°C (39° F) and -4° C (25° F), costs around $3 per device. BlindSpotz™ freeze spot technology costs pennies per package, they claim. The CTI capability embeds the technology into an ink system that can be incorporated into the existing printing process for packaging. .
Patrick Edson, CTI’s chief marketing officer, explains, “Every packaging company in the world that supports food, medical and industrial clients just got access to a new pipeline of innovation to help their clients improve quality, safety and create a better consumer experience. It just requires one print station and the technology can be implemented.”
Randall Lane, ATI’s chief strategy officer, adds, “We’ve been challenged by the pharmaceutical industry to create a simple, low-cost freeze indicator at the vial-level that is intuitive to a medical worker and offers the option to make it easy to record data of temperature damage, drug type and location. BlindSpotz™ technology does all of this.
BlindSpotz™ is available in UV and Water-based Flexo, Water-based Gravure, Wet Offset, UV-Wet Offset ink formulas, as well as finished devices.
The cold-chain market is expected to grow to US$293 billion dollars by 2023, a 54% increase over 2017.
