The fourth annual Gravure Association of the Americas (GAAmericas) symposium on Printed Electronics, Functional Printing, and Intelligent Packaging was recently held on June 23-24, 2014. One of the top goals of this symposium was to educate brand owners and packaging professionals on new ways to improve brand protection, authentication, and tracking.

Eastman Kodak Company was one of the companies involved in the symposium. Director of Business Development at Kodak, Keith Cutri, gave a presentation which examined different types of brand protection, discussed potential tampering risks, and proposed strategies for businesses to improve their packaging in the future. Cutri noted that counterfeiting, product tampering, and trademark infringement lead to billions of dollars in lost profit every year, not just for Kodak, but for companies all over the world.

Many consumers will feel compelled to laugh at the notion of faulty packaging — anyone who has experienced the irony of not being able to open a package of scissors without already having a pair of scissors to cut through the blister packaging will know exactly how funny this sounds. And to be fair, serious product tampering cases are not the most common issues that companies and consumers have to deal with today. Nevertheless, it still happens often enough to be a serious issue. Blister “clamshell” packaging exists only because there have been serious cases of product tampering in the past; businesses use this type of packaging so often because there still are people out there who would, and sometimes do, take advantage of opportunities to mess with products and harm customers.

It only takes a quick look in the news to find cases of shocking, and seemingly unexplainable, cases of product tampering. Some people tamper with products for their own benefit, such as the couple in 2010 who would fill empty Jell-o pudding cups with sand mixtures and return them to the grocery store, without thinking that other customers could be harmed in the process. Others have more malicious motives behind tampering with products, such as contaminating water bottles with dangerous chemicals, with the sole intent being to poison people. Regardless of why products may be destroyed or tampered with, it’s clear that there are enough potential risks to convince companies that secure packaging is of the utmost importance. Hopefully, more product packaging symposiums will take place in future years to help businesses keep their products safe while also making items more accessible to customers.