Counterfeiting in all shapes and sizes has spun badly out of control. In response, packaging and brand protection departments at packaged goods manufacturers are seeking ways to keep counterfeiting from doing further damage.

Take SKF, for example. A maker of bearings, seals, and lubrication systems based in Goteborg, Sweden, SKF has a major presence in the Middle East. Upon learning that an inferior grade of its high-performance grease was being sold in illegally copied cans, the company began searching for something to add to its authentic cans that would be difficult to counterfeit. The solution came from SKF’s long-term can vendor, Crown Specialty Packaging. Crown introduced SKF to Protact™ Holographic, available through Corus Packaging Plus. It’s a combination of PET film that is heat-sealed to electrolytic chromium-coated steel. The film carries microembossed aluminized resin that captures holographic images.

“We worked with Crown and Corus to create a hologram design with our SKF company logo on it,” says Robert McConnachie, Global Sales and Marketing Manager for SKF’s Maintenance Products Division. “It’s very difficult for a counterfeiter to create the same hologram.”

In pharmaceuticals, countless anticounterfeiting initiatives are under way. One notable recent initiative is AstraZeneca’s Serialized Authentication Program. It’s a twopronged effort to protect drug products with unit-level serialized tamper-evident security seals (TESS) combined with unique carton numbers (UCN).

The new program is being used first to protect supplies of Nexium, a prescription-only gastrointestinal drug. The serialization will be implemented on paperboard cartons containing blister packs holding seven to 28 tablets. The United States will not be included in the mass serialization program because the U.S. market—unlike Europe, where unit-dose packaging is far more common—sends tablets in bulk containers that pharmacists count into vials.

The unique number that each Nexium carton carries is a 2D bar code printed on line at the AstraZeneca plant where packaging takes place using the TIPS Serialization Product tracking solution from Systech International.

The second prong of AstraZeneca’s authentication program is a serialized TE seal from Authentix. David Teale, Product Security Director at AstraZeneca, describes the use of serialization on both carton and TE label as a “bookend approach.”

“We authenticate the pack as it leaves our manufacturing plant by uploading the unique numbers into a database,” Teale says. “If the last person to handle the pack in the supply chain can authenticate the package against the database, we know both ends of the supply chain are secure.”

Learn more about current anti-counterfeiting strategies.