easyFairs Packaging Innovations Show

Anti-Counterfeiting in the pharma industry – Latest Packaging Trends & Technologies

easyFairs, the trade show specialists, are launching a new pharmaceutical workshop which will be making its debut at the easyFairs  packaging shows @ NEC, Birmingham, UK this February. The event will be organised and delivered by Design Cognition and an array of experts from the anti-counterfeiting & packaging industries.

The new ‘Pharma counterfeiting workshop’ will help delegates identify the key issues, and look at emerging packaging trends and technologies, including all sorts of overt (visible) solutions such as holograms and covert (hidden) solutions including various printing, coating and forensic technologies.

Leading thinkers and experts in the industry, will provide an unbiased and independent overview to help attendees see the ‘wood from the trees’. Taking place on 29 February (9.30am – 1.30pm) the workshop is being billed as one of the main highlights of the easyFairs event, which last year attracted over 4,500 visitors.

Amongst the speakers, Anne Dallison, Fellow of the Packaging Society and CTO at Design Cognition commented: “In a dynamic market, as well as providing a fantastic opportunity to get the latest perspective from industry experts such as the MHRA & PAGB on packaging implications of legislation such as the Falsified Medicines Directive and what it could mean for Brand Owners, this workshop will also provide an unrivalled and cost-effective means of networking with industry peers and leading-edge experts from the world of anti-counterfeiting. So if you want to stay one step ahead – you can’t afford to miss this!”

Also speaking at the show will be Jeremy Plimmer, Editor/Publisher at Product & Image Security Foundation and Chairman of West Midlands Packaging Society, who will be focusing on ‘Security Packaging – Is it a necessity or unnecessary expense.’  James Bevan, Director at Vandagraf and Agent for NetEnforcers in Europe will be looking at Internet Security and how to catch the fakers and identify fake sites.

Counterfeiting of products and packaging has become a multi-billion business, toys, dietary supplements, wine and iPhones are among the tens of thousands of counterfeit items seized every year. The speakers will bring the topics to life with real-life, hands-on examples and are encouraging delegates to bring their own packs along for a free counterfeit – audit, which can be conducted separately in a confidential environment if necessary.

Matt Benyon, Managing Director at easyFairs, comments: “Fake goods are certainly big business, especially in all this economic gloom. Intellectual property crime is estimated to be worth around £1.3bn in the UK each year and the Anti-Counterfeiting group, estimate that 12% of toys for sale in the UK are fakes. With ‘fake’ goods being such a hot topic we saw the importance of providing a comprehensive workshop concentrating just on this area, it is vital that packaging companies  help protect brands and retailers against counterfeiting with holograms or covert printing solutions.”

If you are interested in attending the Anti-Counterfeiting workshop you can register for the event here: Online Registration Form

Or for further information and a full list of speakers please contact Chris Penfold, CEO of Design Cognition, on +44 (0)115 846 1914 or email chris@designcognition.com

Delegate Fee: £149 – Fee includes full set of course documentation as well as refreshments and lunch. Places are limited and expected to go very quickly, so book early to avoid any disappointment.

We look forward to seeing you there.

The Student Starpack Packaging Design Awards are open for entry. Rachel Brooks explains the briefs on offer for 2012, and catches up on developments within the Starpack Advisory Board.

Student Starpack 'Best in Show 2011'

The Student Starpack Awards challenge students to solve problems set by brand-leading FMCG companies, design agencies and manufacturers, and win recognition of their excellence. Designed to encourage students to take up a career in consumer packaging design, they are the only awards in the UK aimed exclusively at providing a platform for new talent emerging from universities, colleges and schools……

Check out further info at The Packaging Society site:

Student Starpack Awards – further information

Packaging Design & Innovation 19th Oct 2011

As many of you may know, as well as running Design Cognition, I am Chairman of the East Midlands Packaging Society (based in Nottingham UK) and in that role, my main focus this year is to entice more of you, our valued members, to take part in events and also to encourage ‘new blood’ into the industry.

We’ve got some fantastic events lined-up, in which you could participate in a number of different ways and at a number of different levels – it’s up to you how far you want to get involved.

Much of it will be FREE and could directly benefit you personally and your business.

You may want to participate yourself, or you know someone else that could be interested. Either way, I’m looking for partners and I’d love to hear from you. The aim of the whole exercise is to help raise the profile of packaging but also to facilitate the integration of academia and industry for everyone’s benefit. So this is applicable to:

Students – who may want to learn & enhance career options

Universities – looking for business avenues/partnerships to help commercialise their ideas

Product development companies, packaging suppliers & design agencies – wanting to keep up with latest technology & also identify high calibre students for job placements & opportunities

The first of our events is on 19th October at Nottingham Trent University, 4.30 – 8.30pm with a free buffet and refreshments (see flyer attached).

All are welcome, members and non-members, but pre-registration is essential – just drop me an email to: chris@designcognition.com

Come along and listen to some exciting & leading-edge talks from the university & from the packaging design industry. Network with industry & academic experts – with various table-top demonstrations, discuss your design projects in an informal atmosphere and get practical mentoring help & advice.

Some of the highlighted topics will include:

Smartphone technology & how it can enhance the consumer experience

Using packaging technology to tackle counterfeiting

University research into brand design

Display technology for packing applications

Design of packaging for reuse / recycling

You can find out more about this and other East Midlands Packaging Society events on our ‘ning’ site:

East Midlands Packaging Society website

and also on our LinkedIn Group & Facebook Pages:

EMPS LinkedIn Group

EMPS Facebook page

This is the first of three planned university partnership events during the next 12 months, so whether in academia or business – You decide how you want to get involved, which could be as a speaker, sponsor, exhibitor, trainer or as a participant – how could it best benefit yourself? I really do think that ‘everyone’s a winner’ with this. More details to follow in future blogs.

If you’ve got any other ideas yourself, let me know.

Chris Penfold

Chairman – East Midlands Packaging Society

chris@designcognition.com

00 44 115 846 1914

Effective Packaging Training

We’ve just scheduled-in our latest packaging training courses and interactive workshops for May, including ‘Branded added-value packaging’, ‘Introduction to pharmaceutical packaging’ & ‘Injection Moulding/tooling’ -  Take a look and let us know what you think. We are always looking for new topics of interest and we can run bespoke (tailored) courses at your premises for your whole team, whether in the UK or internationally -  generally much more focused & cost effective for you.

We’ve also got another 8 or 9 courses & workshops planned in for June and July. As well as our highly acclaimed ‘Plastics Materials’ course, we have many new topics, including ‘bar coding (including mass serialisation)’, ’sustainability’, ‘Medical Devices’, ‘Print processes & decoration’, ‘Glass’, ‘Blister materials’, ‘Regulatory aspects’ and ‘Innovation, creativity & breakthrough thinking’.

So watch this space – We’ll keep you updated!

Follow this link to view our latest training courses

Have a great Easter!

Chris Penfold

coca cola - branded packaging that delivers

In today’s increasingly competitive marketplace, effective branding is essential.

So we are running a 1 day course to give you hints, tips and pointers on how to make your product stand out on shelf through effective packaging as a marketing tool.

It will explain how to transform your good brand into a GREAT brand and help take your products to the ‘next level’, looking at a number of important aspects including brand values, added value & convenience, rationalisation, pack size, reducing material cost and innovation to get retailer acceptance, drive sales and increase profitability.

9th December 2010 at Biocity in Nottingham, UK

HURRY NOW – find out more & how to register to get an EARLY BIRD DISCOUNT by clicking Branded Packaging That Delivers

Here’s how ‘Eco Warrior’ and ‘Gaia Capitalist’ David de Rothschild made his catamaran ‘Plastiki’ out of recycled PET bottle packaging -- turning waste into resource and into an (almost) completely recyclable boat, that he then sailed from San Francisco to Sydney.

You can read the related article I wrote earlier today here: Sailing through the Plastiki soup in search of Paradise

Chris Penfold

Plastiki - David de Rothschild's yacht made of recycled PET bottles

As we have discussed in previous posts, there is a huge and ever-increasing mountain of rubbish growing in the middle of the Pacific, like a giant festering ’soup’, much of which consists of plastic packaging waste. This has had a massive knock-on affect in the  form of polluted beaches on islands throughout the South Pacific. See our previous article: Great Pacific Garbage Patch article

David de Rothschild is a man on a mission. The offspring of the wealthy banking family, he is one of a new breed of environmental crusaders and entrepreneurs that some are calling ‘Gaia capitalists’. ‘Gaia’ in mythology was the primal Greek goddess of the Earth and aptly a ‘gyre’ in oceanography is any large system of rotating ocean currents (source: Wikipedia).

To highlight the Pacific issue and raise it’s profile in mainstream media, De Rothschild decided to use his family’s high profile  (& money) to build a yacht made entirely of recycled plastic bottle packaging, which he named ‘Plastiki’ (making reference and tribute to the late Thor Heyerdahl’s papyrus Kon-tiki raft which crossed the Pacific back in 1947). Over a four month period he sailed this 60ft catamaran from San Francisco to Sydney, where he landed last week. But his exploits are no shallow ploy to fill aimless days with fun and adventure.

De Rothschild and his ‘Gaia’ friends are driven by a combination of social conscience and economic pragmatism, seeking a ‘paradigm shift’ in the way we live and desecrate our planet. They espouse a new form of capitalism that factors in the environment and social wellbeing as a cost. It considers protecting the environment not only as a moral issue but as a set of design challenges to correct inefficiencies that make the capitalist system unsustainable. Waste, for example, is considered the result of inadequate thinking. If you are smarter about it, and create products that work properly, then you shouldn’t have to throw anything away at the end – should you? The group include Chad Hurley (33) who with his co-founder, sold YouTube to Google for $1.6Bn and has since ploughed some of his fortune into the Green Products Innovation Institute and Jeffrey Skoll, worth $2.4Bn, who wrote the business plan for eBay and has set up the Skoll Foundation to encourage ’social entrepreneurs’ to play a greater role in developing a better world (source: The  Sunday Times).

These are ‘game changers’, who see solutions where others see problems – a new entrepreneurial revolution – one of collaboration something that de Rothschild calls ‘Planet 2.0′. So I feel that we will be hearing a lot more from this ‘band of brothers’ in the future. They mean to ‘rattle some cages’, get us all to think differently and make a real impact by influencing things at ‘the top’. They have a point! Can we really carry on the way we are? For a really ’sustainable future’, for our children and their children’s sakes, things have to change a lot quicker.What do you think?

Chris Penfold

Pharmaceutical packaging requirements can be a minefield

Do you work in the pharmaceutical industry on the ‘periphery’ of packaging, working for example in Marketing, Purchasing, Design or QA etc , and have always wanted to find out more about packaging, but without having to attend a lengthy 3 day training course? Or perhaps you are a Packaging Technologist working on toiletries or cosmetics and want to gain a better understanding pharma issues and opportunities?

If so, then this ONE DAY TRAINING COURSE could be for you!

It’s being held on 14th October 2010 in Nottingham, UK

Pharmaceutical packaging is a very specialised area with its own unique issues & problems. This one day course will provide delegates with a good basic grounding & appreciation of what is required for the packaging of pharmaceutical & healthcare products. Whether you know nothing, have a basic understanding or are familiar with the area, this course will provide you with useful knowledge and insights from experts who have each worked in the industry for over 25 years.

What will be covered:

1.Packaging component & material selection Key product requirements (Consumer, Barrier, Shelf Life & Regulatory – Child resistance, Tamper evidence, Dosing & Stability. Marketing expectations.

2. Key properties of various materials / systems Main barriers & benefits of various packaging materials, Key drivers for pack performance, Supply chain implications on the packs

3. Pack testing & evaluation Mandatory requirements for Consumer testing & Transit testing.

4. Packaging component specifications Key requirements for a specification, Control of the documents.

5. Artwork generation & control Establishing processes suitable to your business needs – Wording & Templates, Creation, Version control & authorisation.

6.Regulatory requirements Packaging data for the MA , Braille, barcodes, Child Resistance, Tamper Evidence, Readability & others – including emerging requirements (e.g. 2D data matrix barcodes). Key packaging data for the MA/Dossier (Specifications & data, Supplier details). Key requirements for Braille etc.

7. Transit packaging Considerations of risk, Establishing test programmes, Specific requirements for palletisation etc.

8. Trade /supply chain requirements Understanding the various markets & their particular requirements, Understanding trade requirements (e.g. Barcodes, Shelf Ready Trays etc).

A full set of documentation will be provided.

You can find out more and register for this event by clicking: More information on Packaging of Pharmaceuticals – a One Day Introductory Course 14th October 2010

Chris Penfold

As your training partners Design Cognition can provide all of your packaging-related training needs

We believe that the old adage that ‘your people are your most important asset’ is true. It’s fundamental that key members of staff keep pace with new technologies, best-practice processes and the continually evolving packaging regulations and standards – not an easy task for busy professionals, is it?

Additionally, it’s essential to keep a teams’ skills ‘honed’ to make sure that they are well-informed in order to help maintain competitive edge.

With that in mind, at Design Cognition, we have created a range of friendly, easy-to-learn and access courses to help you in two important areas:

1. Knowledge

To help you develop your own knowledge and experience, so that you are equipped to make better and more informed decisions.

2. Skills

To help you apply the information provided and learn through your own insights and experience.

The training sessions will be fairly interactive, providing plenty of opportunities for you to bring your current packaging problems along for review and discussion by the tutor, in confidence if necessary.

We guarantee to engage your interest and commitment on the courses and are confident our training will improve your effectiveness at work. In addition, you’ll receive a full set of course notes in a comprehensive ‘takeaway’ package for future reference.

We also encourage you to let us know what you think. We are always able to consider running a bespoke course for you, if that would suit you better, and most courses are available as in-house training programmes at your own premises.

You can find out more about our training events at: Design Cognition training programme

We have put together a range of courses, from areas as diverse as creative and technical disciplines and from processes ranging from artwork generation to cost-optimisation. Some of our initial topics include:

Pharmaceutical packaging, Branding and shelf impact, Introduction to packaging for non-packaging professionals, 2D Data Matrix barcodes, Braille and Sustainability.

Further information and dates will follow on our ‘Training’ page and we are continually adding to these events, so please pop back often to review additions, or ask to join our training mailing list (email: training@designcognition.com) or call +44 (0)115 846 1914.

Chris Penfold

Bex's beautiful pestle & mortar

It’s Friday and we’ve reached the end of a journey – the last in our series of reviews of the High Street Dreams, BBC ‘reality TV show’ about product branding, packaging & design development. Following on from yesterday, we continue to look at ‘Homeware’, but this time it’s the turn of Bex Simon, an artistic blacksmith who designs beautiful one-off metal-ware objects for the home.

From her forge in East London, she produces stunning one-off commissioned ‘works of art’ in steel. Everything from table-top candelabras to ornate garden gates. Like many other small businesses, she is limited by the achievable output from her ‘one-woman-band’ operation and to meet demand in a more ‘cut-throat’ commercial world would need to find reliable partners/outsourced resource who could produce her designs to the same quality but at a fraction of the cost.

Bex’s mentor in the show was product designer Nick Munro, who is famous for (at the age of 23) kick-staring his ‘business empire’ by turning a bedspring into a commercial success as an ‘egg cup’. He has since created ranges for John Lewis, Arga and Fired Earth, with over 500 designs in production. As a starting point he took Bex to the Victoria & Albert museum (V&A) to study 5 centuries-worth of ironmongery as inspiration. Was she inspired? You bet! Everything from cotton-twist glass, pan hangers, bells, door chimes and (the crowning glory) a pestle & mortar, which got Bex really excited!

So off she went to design her own and a week later, after mapping out all of her ideas on a giant floor-mural, came ‘back to the table’ with a wonderful pestle & mortar of her own. She contacted a commercial casting foundry regarding a mould and after commissioning a prototype, she sat down with the Jo Malone, Nick Leslau and Nick Munro to be quizzed about costings and, like many of the other creative ‘contestants’, failed miserably when it came to business and finance. Bex’s solution was to involve her husband Dave more in the business to cover the financial aspects, leaving her to cover the artistic elements.

Bex's alluring carton branding with pink logo & embossed bubbles

At this point branding consultancy Landor were brought into ‘the frame’, providers of branding to well known brands like Heinz Baked Beans, Morrison’s supermarkets and Vodafone, to name but a few. The result was some very alluring branding in the form of an eye-catching and distinctive bright pink anvil logo (great) and a very appropriate grey/slate carton embossed with some swirling bubbles, the logo and a short sentence on the back of the carton, also in bright pink lettering (tastefully done): “FORGED with LOVE”. Bex says of the logo, it was a “cleverly designed pink colour infill to be off centre to represent the jarring from the strike of the hammer” The box was lined with some matching bright pink tissue paper which added vibrancy & energy to the pestle and mortar product within. See the picture above. Of all of the High Street Dreams packaging shown over the past few weeks, this is my favourite. Bex says herself, on her website: ”the colours we chose for the packaging and website were to represent the filth and grime of the workshop, whilst maintaining a luxurious and premium feel.” Having looked at Bex’s website (link at end of this post), I think that the branding there is also well put together and professional looking – overall it’s all very well coordinated.

Along with Harry Singer (see yesterday’s Phlib post), the ‘big test’ for Bex was a 1-day test that Jo Malone sorted out at the national lifestyle exhibition – The Ideal Home Show at Earl’s Court in London. The three things that they were trying to evaluate were:
1.    How you sell your product
2.    Whether you are great PR ambassadors to your product
3.    How the consumers view your product

Unfortunately for Bex, unlike Harry, consumers weren’t as engaged for her, with products priced at £125 for a pewter? (or maybe steel) pestle and mortar and £250 for a bronze version. Everyone liked her work but no one was willing to pay that sort of money for a piece of ‘kitchen decorative art/furniture’, even though it was all “hand finished and polished”. This led to a concern by Jo and Nick that Bex wasn’t ready to pitch to a retailer – they thought that she needed more time to get her ‘act together’, which Bex took pretty well really. So she lived to ‘fight another day’. It’s interesting to note that, since the programme Bex announced on Twitter recently that she had been approached by Heals with a view to displaying some of her work in-store. So that’s a positive conclusion – well done Bex!

In terms of packaging, where does that leave us?

As far as I can tell, at the moment the only products that Bex is selling as ‘retail items’ are the pestle & mortar, which are available on her website for a price of £80 now  – a big reduction on what they were being sold for at the Ideal Home Show exhibition. Other products, such as her wrought iron gates and garden furniture etc are generally huge and bulky, one-off items. These are impractical to develop or even have a need for a range of bespoke packaging but I think that Bex should make the most of her branding and maybe make some wrought-iron ‘tags’ on which she could etch “FORGED with Love from Bex” with her logo (each painted pink) as a really engaging and personal note to each customer – and that would be really novel!
Informing
I believe that there is also a place for Bex to print some really high quality brochures (if she hasn’t done so already), with some stunning atmospheric photography to engage consumers at an emotional level, providing an opportunity for Bex to ‘connect’ with her target market. She could provide all sorts of information on the brand heritage, her vision for the business, brand values, the methods she uses to make her artistic creations, the quality of materials & methods used and really build an emotional story on which to ‘pivot’ her brand.
Transporting & Protecting

Clearly there is a need to transport and protect the large items as they are transported, which is probably best performed by some form of ‘designer (pink?) bubble-wrap’ or other, more environmentally friendly material. Careful use of traditional ‘padding’ materials like corrugated board and bubble-wrap can provide a simple enough ‘filler’ to protect the product from crushing, but there are a number of alternative organic, compostable and ‘sealed air’ filler materials around now that can also provide a more ‘environmentally friendly’ transit packaging solution. These could be complimented with the embossed ‘anvil’ metal labels that I mentioned above to provide some branding.
I hope that this has highlighted SOME of the added branding and packaging considerations that need to be taken into account when developing and selling high quality bespoke art products to the market. Well done Bex, we wish you every success in the future.
You can find out more about Bex’s products from her Bexsimon website.
Chris Penfold