Unilever and Hasbro aim to help UK become a 'world class' leader in smart packaging
Brands including Unilever and Hasbro have joined a consortium to develop 'world class' near-field communication (NFC) packaging capability in the UK.
Led by The Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) the three-year project, titled ‘SCOPE’, "will build the manufacturing capability, capacity and skills required to commercialise and position the UK as a world leader in smart products – a fast growing billion dollar global market".
The project will cover sectors such as fast-moving consumer goods, beverages, games and security and provide a platform to develop second-generation opportunities within other key UK sectors including healthcare, food, energy, built-environment, defence and transport.
A key focus of SCOPE will be to manufacture NFC products at a cost of less than one pence.
Commenting on the project, Mike Clausen, programme manager at CPI said: "Going forward the next steps are to upscale the manufacturing process to ensure that these novel NFC applications are produced at the cost and speeds that industry demands. To do this, we are currently developing the capability to scale up these production processes to produce market trial samples of up to 50,000-100,000 tags."
SCOPE is a £10m collaborative project and is co-funded by the Advanced Manufacturing Supply Chain Initiative (AMSCI).