Key points
The tail end of 2014 saw a flurry of UK media interest around a new technology – Bump Mark – which aims to improve the accuracy of information about whether packaged food is fit to eat. This is an objective which the new gelatine-based label shares with several other kinds of indicator generally classified as ‘intelligent packaging’.
But, in other ways, Bump Mark is a radically new departure, unlike the vast majority of these existing technologies.
For example, it does not use a chemical or colour change to indicate an alteration in temperature or other aspect of the in-pack atmosphere over time. Secondly, it is designed to benefit consumers, as well as supply chain personnel, and operates at item-level rather than traded unit-level, such as case and pallet. Last, but not least, unlike other technologies, it could (the inventor suggests) be a zero-cost solution.
Solveiga Paktaité came up with the concept as part of a final-year project at Brunel University, London. One of the triggers was the amount of food she saw fellow students throwing away. She is eager to help reduce food waste by giving a more accurate product expiry than current date coding.
Bump Mark is no conventional label. Sealed inside transparent plastic is a ridged backing strip overlaid with a gelatine solution. Critically, this solution’s concentration is tailored to match the rate of deterioration of the product inside the pack. As the gelatine starts to decay, the bumps below can be detected by touch, indicating the food inside the pack is probably no longer edible.
In September 2014, Paktaité won a James Dyson award for innovation and later in the year ran a one-day in-store trial with Asda. Currently, she has a development contract with Marks & Spencer (M&S), which is helping to fund further lab research and further trials in exchange for a period of exclusivity in using the system.
She is hoping to run commercial trials using small batches of the labels by the end of the year.
Paktaité explains: “M&S says it doesn't want the label to add any cost to the product. Its success will come down to me driving the cost down as low as possible. I’m not putting any numbers on the cost at the moment, but gelatine is a waste product, and it may be that some businesses may actually pay us to take it away.”
Then again, food-grade gelatine is an ingredient which manufacturers pay for like any other.
Supplier headache (return to top)
Whatever the final costings on Bump Mark, this glimpse of retailer attitudes highlights a more general headache for suppliers of intelligent packaging. Whether for time temperature indicators (TTIs), which log any deviation from given temperature parameters, or freshness indicators, which detect specific gases or other microbiological changes, cost is a major concern.
Paktaité notes that, in her experience, none of the available intelligent technologies have seen commercial applications on food in the UK. “All of these competing systems seem to be stuck on using colour change as an indicator,” she says. “From talking to M&S, it’s clear that you have to use a chemical compound to achieve these changes, and those compounds will be too expensive to apply to a label.”
3M Food Safety, which makes the Freeze Watch and MonitorMark TTI tags for temperatures below and above freezing, argues that item-level labelling costs would have to be passed on to consumers.
In the US, 3M’s marketing development manager John Wadie says: “Consumer-level packaging will arrive in mass once consumers indicate that they will pay more for products that they can confirm have been shipped within a specific date under strict temperature controls.”
Up to now, 3M has stuck with its two intelligent indicators for discretionary supply chain use. It says it has no plans to introduce other systems, including at item level.
In Belgium, Dr Mike Vanderroost of Ghent University’s Food Safety and Food Quality department has researched most of the current intelligent technologies, and is co-ordinating the multi-partner CheckPack project to develop a new system.
He agrees that cost is the first barrier in the way of greater uptake of intelligent packaging solutions. But it is not the only barrier. “Many food companies are not aware that these technologies exist,” he says. He adds that, even where there is awareness, there may also be scepticism about the benefits.
Is the UK being particularly slow in adopting intelligent labels? Not according to Dr Judith Kreyenschmidt, head of the Cold Chain Management Group at the University of Bonn's Institute of Animal Science, Germany.
She has been working in this area for at least 15 years, having helped to develop a system at the University of Bayreuth in 2000. “There is still no one in Germany who has used it commercially,” she reports. “Retailers are unwilling to adopt it.” Since then, Kreyenschmidt and her team have worked on major EU projects including Freshlabel (and the IQ-Freshlabel extension) and Chill-On. But despite this research focus and interest from the rest of the supply chain, retailers remain staunchly opposed to it.
Chill chain problems (return to top)
“The problem is not so much the cost,” she argues. “The fact is that the retailers know there are problems with their own chill chains.” Any intelligent labelling system would highlight these deficiencies and lead to high reject rates.
Paktaité has spoken to most of the UK’s food retailers. “I’ve been quite surprised that some supermarkets do have a temperature abuse problem, and they don’t want consumers to know about it,” she says. “Some of them told me their supply chain was not strong enough to give consumers this information.” In certain cases, she says, they even asked if labels could be applied at the moment product was put on the shelf.
On this topic, Kreyenschmidt adds: “Retailers point out that they don’t know what happens after the point-of-sale.” The fear is that a label’s apparent evidence of a mismanaged chill chain might be abused by consumers.
Wadie at 3M adds: “Retailer adoption will come when there is a means to confirm that the product they released to the consumer met all the quality and safety promises.” In other words, retailers need assurance that they will not be held accountable for product mishandling after product leaves the store.
The German retailers that Kreyenschmidt has spoken to are afraid that any sort of intelligent packaging would actually add to food waste, rather than helping to reduce it. This is not her view. In fact, as part of her work on IQ-Freshlabel, she co-authored a paper last year which researched the impact of TTIs on food waste.
She established a relatively low level of 12% waste along the supply chain (including the consumer) for poultry in Germany. Use of a TTI reduced this by 35%, her figures showed.
The label used in the research was OnVu, marketed by Bizerba. Other commercially available TTIs include Timestrip and Temptime. Among other initiatives, Temptime has been working with Norwegian company ThinFilm Electronics on temperature-sensing ‘smart’ labels.
But a glance at current applications for these technologies shows that the vast majority are in the pharmaceutical and medical area. Here, the intrinsic value of product is much higher than in food and drink, with best practice more firmly established – and indeed regulated.
The item-level tags used in Kreyenschmidt’s poultry study helped to cut waste in the home by showing when supposedly ‘out of date’ product was actually fit to eat. The same logic lies behind Bump Mark in the UK.
But even where new systems are being developed, they still tend to be covert, for supply chain use. Ghent University’s Vanderroost believes this will remain the case. “Otherwise, it’s a bit like handling the consumer a stick with which to beat the retailer,” he says.
Covert approach (return to top)
As an example of this covert approach, the CheckPack project he is working on is currently approaching the ‘proof of concept’ stage. The technology twins an optical sensor, which detects gases created during spoilage, with an infra-red source/reading unit.
Whether covert or overt, 3M’s Wadie agrees that the food industry has been slow to adopt temperature monitoring until recently. Perhaps the major factor now accelerating adoption in the US has been new regulatory requirements. In particular, he points to the 2011 US Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) and the Global Food Safety Initiative’s benchmarking of standards, including the British Retail Consortium (BRC).
“They are creating a higher degree of accountability,” he says. “Every organisation that ‘touches’ product throughout the chain must verify that temperatures were controlled at the proper levels when in their custody.”
Kreyenschmidt confirms that products such as fish imported to the US have for a few years had to use technology to monitor temperatures.
Since this was driven by regulation and looking to Europe, she says “Maybe this is the only way that change will come.”