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Following the successful Brand Protection project "Fingerprint Box", the PrintCity Activity Group "Packaging, Commercial & Sheetfed" (AG PCS) announces a new project focused on "Security Solutions in Packaging Printing for the Pharmaceutical Industry".
Pharmaceutical brand owners are a major target group for this competence study. PrintCity alliance members Jura JSP, Kurz, MAN Roland, Merck, M-real, Sun Chemical and Weilburger will be working together to share information intensively to create a valuable "knowledge base" for packaging printers and converters serving the pharmaceutical market and brand owners. Later on, this study can be easily extended to other interested markets.
This project is being led by Thomas Scholler of Jura JSP, with the Activity Group Manager PCS for PrintCity being Siegfried Bradl.
This new PrintCity project is expected to conclude in the fourth quarter of 2007, following an exhaustive analysis of subjects including:
- Overview of today’s available solutions and technologies in security printing for the packaging industry
- "Best practice" solutions for product anti-counterfeiting
- Creating of "Added value" packaging involving latest brand protection methods
- Cost / Benefit analysis of alternatives, to assist investment decisions
Although the magnitude of the global pharmaceutical counterfeiting problem is impossible to measure accurately, the World Health Organisation has estimated that more than 10% of the global medicines market is counterfeit. Similar estimates for medicines consumed across all developing countries indicate 25% as being counterfeit, with the figure being as high as 50% in some markets.
Additionally, The Center for Medicines in the Public Interest in the United States predicts that counterfeit drug sales will reach US$ 75 billion globally by 2010, an increase of more than 90% since 2005.
The risk to the health of people being dispensed fake pharmaceuticals is of the highest priority to the industry, but the damage to pharmaceutical company profits and brand reputation is of great commercial significance also.
The integrity of any pharmaceutical drugs can be protected by the application of a variety of anti-counterfeiting packaging techniques, often in combination to increase protection.
This PrintCity "Connection of Competence" study will give industry professionals access to cross-industry knowledge and innovative solutions to the issues facing pharmaceutical packaging printers.
In particular PrintCity and its members are amongst the leading sources of technical, production and security focused solutions, to fight against growing drug counterfeiting operations worldwide.
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