Smart packaging refers to product packaging beyond the usual functions of protection or containment of products, incorporating various technologies that benefit end-customers and distributing companies. These can be through embedded sensor technology extending shelf life and monitoring freshness to electronic displays that indicate the product’s quality, temperature, pH, and moisture. For example, the integration of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) transponders help track packages, prevent theft, and ensure supply chain management, while freshness indicators for food packaging monitor and indicate the quality of food items within the container.

Smart packaging solutions are used in many applications encompassing food and beverage (F&B), healthcare and pharmaceutical, and personal care industries. It is made up of two broad sub-segments; intelligent packaging that enables transfer of package contents to the outer world (e.g. gas sensors, time-temperature indicators) and active packaging that interacts with packaged content to improve quality and extend shelf-life of products by adding/removing specific substances (e.g. oxygen absorbers, light filtering materials). The key focus of this report is intelligent packaging.