Printcity Project For Packaging Security Systems

The Printcity Activity Group for packaging, commercial and sheetfed, has announced a new project focused on security systems in packaging printing for the pharmaceutical industry.

The Printcity Activity Group for packaging, commercial and sheetfed, has announced a new project focused on security systems in packaging printing for the pharmaceutical industry.

Pharmaceutical brand owners are a major target group for the competence study, said Printcity, whose alliance members Jura JSP, Kurz, MAN Roland, Merck, M-real, Sun Chemical and Weilburger, will be working together to share information to create a 'knowledge base' for packaging printers and converters serving the pharmaceutical market and brand owners.

Later, the study could be extended to other interested markets, added Printcity.

This project is being led by Thomas Scholler of Jura JSP, with the activity group manager PCS for Printcity being Siegfried Bradl.

The new Printcity project is expected to conclude in the fourth quarter of this year, following an analysis of subjects, including an overview of today's available systems and technologies in security printing for the packaging industry.

It will also include an examination of best practice systems for product anti-counterfeiting and the creation of added value packaging involving latest brand protection methods, as well as a cost and benefit analysis of alternatives, to assist investment decisions.

Printcity said that although the magnitude of the global pharmaceutical counterfeiting problem is impossible to measure accurately, the World Health Organisation has estimated that more than 10 percent of the global medicines market is counterfeit.

Similar estimates for medicines consumed across all developing countries indicate 25 per cent as being counterfeit, with the figure being as high as 50 per cent in some markets.

Additionally, The Centre for Medicines in the Public Interest in the United States has predicted that counterfeit drug sales will reach US$75 billion globally by 2010, an increase of more than 90 per cent since 2005.

The risk to the health of people being dispensed fake pharmaceuticals is of the highest priority to the industry, but the damage to pharmaceutical company profits and brand reputation is of great commercial significance also, added Printcity.

The integrity of any pharmaceutical drugs can be protected by the application of a variety of anti-counterfeiting packaging techniques, often in combination to increase protection.

The Printcity 'connection of competence' study will give industry professionals access to cross-industry knowledge and systems to the issues facing pharmaceutical packaging printers, said the organisation.

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