Counterfeiting is a steadily expanding crime.
This crime hits both the fashion market (of which the cosmetics industry is part) and the pharmaceutical market.

To be successful, action to combat counterfeiting must be carried out at different levels: from legislation to training, from the developmental to the technical.

The technical level certainly affects packaging and in particular secondary packaging, as this is the vehicle that determines the user's first contact with the packed products and the drug or cosmetic.
So it is important that besides its logistic function, the packaging should also and above all perform its identification function.
And on the strength of its daily involvement with the needs of the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industries, Igb is always up to date on all the technology available to produce folding cartons that are ever more safe as well as more correctly identifiable.

Here is a list of the major technology employed today in the production of folding cartons.
The first list regards solutions for product traceability:

1. Datamatrix code: two-dimensional code that is able to transmit large volumes of information about the product contained in the packaging.
2. Double-code sticker for pharmaceutical products: a sticker produced by or on behalf of the Poligrafico di Stato (Italian State Printing Office) and applied directly by pharmaceutical companies and, in some cases, by authorised printing and converting companies.
3. RFID tags: Radio Frequency IDentification is a technology for the automatic identification of objects. The system is based on the remote reading of information contained in an RFID tag by means of RFID readers. Besides protecting products from counterfeiting, such tags can be used to manage information or product traceability.

Others are aimed at identifying the packaging and its content as “authentic”:

1. “Coin-reactive” varnishes: special varnishes that make it possible to hide graphics which can only be made visible when rubbed with a coin.
2. WOOD varnishes: special varnishes that make it possible to hide graphics which can only be made visible when lit up by special lamps.
3. Electronic image processing:
   • lenticular graphics: graphics obtained through particular viewing angles of the screen, that must be filtered through lenticular substrates in order to be made visible.
   • encrypted micro-graphics: graphics and information invisible at first sight, but which can be read and decoded only by using dedicated equipment.
4. Holograms: images of wave interference obtained by use of a specific laser able to create a three-dimensional photographic effect. Since holograms are difficult to counterfeit, they can be used to certify the authenticity of a packaging.
5. Tamper-proof packaging: guarantee seals or folding carton opening systems designed to detect a previous opening action.

Among the solutions listed, only three (Coin-reactive, Holograms, Tamper-proof) enable the end user to ascertain the authenticity of the product directly; for all the other solutions, the monitoring body of the single company or the national control system must intervene to detect counterfeit goods or unauthorised parallel imports.

In the following illustration is a brief Security-Costs classification of the solutions presented.