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Digital Printing Meets Smart Packaging

This smart packaging model involves digitally printing unique watermarks on each pack, creating for each a digital twin to follow through the supply chain, gathering data on the way. Consumers can interact, too, feeding more data back to the brand.

Bag-in-box wine pack formats that have been digitally printed with watermarks that are readable by consumer smartphones were a big splash item at the Sealed Air booth at PACK EXPO.
Bag-in-box wine pack formats that have been digitally printed with watermarks that are readable by consumer smartphones were a big splash item at the Sealed Air booth at PACK EXPO.

At the nexus of digital printing and smart packaging resides Prismiq, a division of Sealed Air (SEE) that made its PACK EXPO International debut. We also saw a detailed account of how this system works at the AIPIA (Smart Packaging Association) World Congress.

At first glance, Prismiq seems like highly conceptual stuff, and it is. That’s because it’s not a single product offering, like a machine or software. Rather, it’s a set of capabilities, products, and options that can be intelligently strung together to achieve a range of outcomes that really depends on the brand’s or CPG’s preference.

From the widest possible angle, Prismiq creates a digital twin for each individual unit that a brand or CPG is producing within a chosen SKU or group of SKUs. That happens thanks to a unique watermark (visible or invisible) that is digitally printed onto the packaging of each and every product unit. The watermark can be read and reacted to in different ways by scanners, sensors, and smartphones as it travels through the supply chain. And upon each interaction with a sensor or smartphone, data is added to the digital twin to better describe that individual product’s unique journey. 

According to the company, Prismiq could impact CPGs at two levels. The more obvious use is in the realm of consumer-facing, experiential smart packaging. A brand can delight its end consumers by providing product provenance information, product-specific nutritional information, or hyper-personalization. That content is made available on a website or app that the consumer can access by scanning a digitally printed watermark on the pack with a smartphone.

But perhaps more foundationally, Prismiq could have big impacts upstream, at the processing, packaging, and supply chain logistics levels. That’s because of the many efficiencies that a company can realize by managing both the digitally printed/watermarked products traveling through the supply chain—gathering and storing data associated with each product as it’s packaged, palletized, and transported—and each product’s digital twin that exists in the cloud, but is uniquely linked to that single product. All the efficiency-borne savings and insights gained by CPGs upstream can end up paying for the enhanced consumer experience with a product downstream.  Sealed Air Photo 2

At PACK EXPO, PW editors spoke with Nathan Henson, the global director for smart packaging and design solutions at Prismiq, to try to wrap our minds around all of this. It’s a prime PACK EXPO example of active, intelligent packaging. 

“Our Prismiq brand is a holistic approach to how we look at digital. It’s our graphic services, it’s our digital printing, and it’s our smart packaging,” he says. “We have two things here. First is our digital printing, which is an inline packaging solution that prints variable data onto products [primary or secondary packaging] in full color graphics [in what could be called a digital watermark, potentially invisible to a consumer]. That allows the [CPG] customer to print variable data, inline and in real time, about each product, onto each product. That data [can serve as the basis for] all the content that the end-consumer is looking to have, whether it’s personalized [or contains pertinent product provenance facts]. 

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