Companies continuing to look for an edge in branding and marketing for consumer products are turning to printed electronics for opportunities to attract customers. Cheap electronics deposited on flexible, paper-thin substrates suitable for packaging are being developed to help brand owners and their packaging partners gain a lead.
+PE.com talks to some of the major developers of plastic electronics for packaging in Europe:
Wolfgang Mildner is MD of PolyIC. The German company has developed integrated display demonstrators for gift cards and event tickets and is planning to ramp up production volume for display and RFID technology
'Electronic packaging is about making differentiation better for products on the shelf. These sorts of technologies [RFID and animated displays] are a defence against counterfeiters, as they are something that you can't easily reproduce.
'We are looking at what kind of display technology we can use, depending on what is comfortable for roll-to-roll production and for packaging use, with issues like thickness and mechanical stresses like folding.
'We're looking to find applications at a reasonable scale and go further with our existing customers on production orders.'
Joel Yocom is business development manager for UK-based Conductive Inkjet Technology. The company develops display manufacturing technologies, including its write once permanent display, which is being discussed for high-end packaging collaborations to begin later in 2009
'Displays could be customised from location to location and even have a personalised approach to marketing, with animations and so forth.
'Write-once could become a packaging player - the ability to differentiate product packaging at low cost is appealing.
'Achieving possible pricing points is really just a scaling factor. I don't think this technology will ever reach the fractions of pence levels required to be in candy wrappers or cola cans, but it may be reduced enough for products with higher price points.'
Joachim Keller, head of business development at Leonhard Kurz. Keller notes that, with companies in the US, Japan and Europe working on scaling up production of materials suitable for packaging, products will arrive within the next 2-5 years
'If you look around a shop and one product has a display blinking next to 1,000 other packages, that's a huge differentiation.
'As far as I know, next to the price and look or feel of a product, the packaging is the number one driver for appeal on first contact with a product.
'The beauty of printed electronics is that you can have several impacts - for instance, RFID technology and displays - using only one material.'
Wilfried Hedderich is head of printed electronics research at Bayer MaterialScience's functional films department. The company has a license agreement with US-based Add-Vision to manufacture OLED displays for signage and packaging
'Our assumption is that packaging will become more and more functional.
'At the moment, everything has been done in the lab - next year we will reach pilot line level and reduce the cost of products. In time, the cost level will be improved.
'In Autumn next year we will produce repeatable parts and send small quantities to customers to try out.'