The multinational pharmaceutical companies are testing the performance of the additive in-house and, depending on the results, could begin using the technology commercially by the third quarter of 2005, according to a report from UK packaging consultancy Pira.
The additive allows a safe, high contrast image to be formed onto edible products in the pharmaceutical and confectionery industries such as pills, capsules, and hard shelled sweets. The process utilises a unique chemistry which reacts with a beam of low power laser light, changing colour, and thereby creating an image.
Previously the most common method of marking pills required a mechanical embossing or surface printing method, both of which result in a significant number of rejects due to damaged/cracked product.
Meanwhile, non-contact printing methods such as inkjet are largely unsuitable for tablets, due to the spread of the ink droplets and slow drying of the ink. There are also a wide range of associated problems, such as maintenance and production line down-time, in addition to issues associated with maintaining printing apparatus and replacing consumables. When dealing with sensitive products such as pharmaceuticals, these problems are particularly undesirable.
In contrast, DataLase can be applied to the surface of the tablet as part of an existing or additional coating process. For example, the coatings typically are used in a spray system/tumble system and then marked by a low power CO2 marking laser.
The two pharma companies looking at using DataLase for various on-tablet uses, including 2D bar codes, to reduce the risk that patients do not receive the right tablets and dosage, in keeping with the objectives of a US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ruling on bar coding that came into force in February 2004. It will also be evaluated as a brand differentiation tool.
Sherwood recently introduced a new product - DataLase Clear - which enables images to be transferred into transparent media such as blister packaging without interfering with the translucency of the substrate.