Cheers! Flexible electronics smartens up packaging

21st November 2017

PragmatIC

Caroline Hayes

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A smart beer label is not necessarily one that tells you when you have had enough, but one that can use push marketing to prompt drinkers to collect money off vouchers, via a smart label.

On other products, it can be used for tutorials, how to use a product like make-up for example, or track and monitor inventory.

At the PragmatIC booth at IDTechEx 2017, in Santa Clara, California, the flexible electronics company announced an agreement with smart packaging specialist, Talking Things to embed its flexible ICs into smart packaging.

Striving for mass market adoption, the FlexICs are thinner than a human hair and are inexpensive enough to be used for disposable food labels, due to using a single layer instead of two to create a flexible IC that is lightweight and flexible.

The ICs can be embedded into labels or packaging to engage users with recipe idea on food packaging, make up tutorials on cosmetics or special offers. They are non-static, unlike a QR code, says PragmatIC's vice president of marketing, Gillian Ewers, so they can updated depending on whether the object is in the home or on the shop shelf for different information or offers in personalised marketing campaigns.

The flexible ICs can be assembled into inlays and tags at a price point up to 80% lower than conventional silicon-based solutions, to make thin, yet robust tags and labels that can be embedded into product packaging or labels.