El Fedrigoni Group presents a unified range of paper products and self-adhesive materials for brand protection in the commercial sector. In this way, the authenticity and integrity of products can be guaranteed and tracked in the era of electronic commerce, a challenge for sectors such as pharmaceuticals.
The synergy between the Paper and Self-Adhesives divisions has allowed Fedrigoni to design highly customizable brand protection solutions, with different materials and multiple functionalities, which specifically respond to the anti-counterfeiting and anti-tampering objectives specific to each sector.
La Fedrigoni anti-counterfeiting offer covers all the requirements for the creation of seals on self-adhesive materials and guarantee packaging. Among them the voids, customizable film products that transfer a design or text to the substrate when removed from the article and can no longer be repositioned; materials ultra-destructible, that break irreparably if you try to remove them once applied; materials delaminable, which are destroyed by delamination, and holographic, which can be customized with different levels of security features for brand protection. Also, tamper-evident solutions specifically designed so that the cardboard to which the seal is applied will tear if an attempt is made to open the packaging, or the security papers, in which fibers, confetti and other special pigments can be integrated to increase the level of authentication. Each product has a different form of verification and authentication, depending on the needs: from solutions manifest, immediately recognizable just by looking or touching the label, up to the forensic, whose verification requires highly specialized equipment.
"The authenticity, safety and integrity of brands, products and packaging are the objective of every company and constitute a strategic asset from an economic and value point of view," he says. Michele DePascalis, Product Manager of security products. “It is precisely the needs of the big luxury and fashion brands, but also those of gourmet food and pharmaceutical manufacturers, that have prompted us to raise awareness among all printers and converters involved in high-quality product packaging about the importance of safety materials. With the presentation of this range, conceived jointly between the Paper and Self-Adhesives divisions for the commercial sector, what we want is to respond to a growing and cross-cutting demand for the protection of authenticity”.
Thanks to extensive experience in the field of security, combined with an R&D department committed to developing and testing increasingly innovative technologies, Fedrigoni is committed to combating a phenomenon that harms brands and consumers and, therefore, to an entire economy: the problem is not simply that a counterfeit product is paid at the price of the original—in addition to the fact that it can be dangerous to health when it comes to medicines, non-certified textile products, food, or beverages—but also that items that are to all intents and purposes original are diverted to so-called "grey markets" and out of the correct distribution chain.
The resources available are numerous and varied: for example, on the front of the self-adhesive labels there are guarantee seals, the function of which is to leave an indelible mark and which cannot be repositioned once removed, or cause irreparable damage to the packaging if Paper and cardboard, for their part, have different properties that can contribute to the creation of boxes, shopping bags and certificates of authenticity that cannot be replioutside the paper mill, because dyes, fibers and other elements that are evident to the naked eye or by technical techniques have been added to the pulp. and following the best practices or surface treatments with reagents, inks, embossing and watermarks that do not affect their recyclability, in line with the company's sustainability objectives.
The Fedrigoni Group has also taken important steps in terms of brand protection through a series of concrete operations. In April 2022, it acquired the French company Tageos, a world leader in the design and production of RFID inserts and labels in self-adhesive labels (so-called "smart labels", capable of storing all the data of a product and allowing its tracking) and, very recently, it has also acquired the Grenoble Research and Development Center (formerly Arjowiggins), also in France, which will drive innovation in the field of printed electronics and advanced research on paper substrates, starting from RFID, with great benefits both in terms of brand protection, traceability and sustainability: smart paper, in fact, can directly house circuits and microchips, ensuring the "one-material" strategy necessary for better disposal and recycling.
