Sometimes the counterfeit is easy to spot—maybe its package contains a hologram whereas the authentic version does not.
However, obvious fakes are no longer so easy to spot. “The bad guys aren’t misspelling product names or making many mistakes in color printing,” noted Sharon Flank, CEO, InfraTrac, who delivered the Nov. 4 presentation, “New Options in Anti-Counterfeiting,” at Pharma EXPO Intl.
Pharma EXPO, co-located with PACK EXPO International Nov. 2-5 in Chicago, is a joint venture of PMMI, The Association for Packaging and Processing Technologies, and the International Society for Pharmaceutical Engineering.
Flank made the following points about anti-counterfeiting developments:
• Just as with personal electronics, spectrometers continue to become smaller and more powerful.
• A multilayer approach is needed to battle counterfeiters, but it’s not always wise to seek the top-of-the line, costliest new technologies. “Don’t think of anti-counterfeiting as an arms race because organized crime uses chemists, too. That approach is doomed.”
• The pharmaceutical distribution chain relies on multiple “hand-offs” in which product security can be risky.
InfraTrac’s website cites a report by Global Industry Analysts, Inc. that says that the global anti-counterfeit packaging market will reach US$8.2 billion by 2015.
