CTI Announces On-Pack Freeze Warning

Published: May 10, 2018

COLORADO SPRINGS, CO | Chromatic Technologies Inc. (CTI), in partnership with American Thermal Instruments (ATI), has launched BlindSpotz freeze-warning technology, which reportedly can be printed economically on individual packages to help protect the brand and consumer of medical supplies and foods, while saving money by lowering product waste.

According to CTI, billions of packages each year of perishable, temperature-sensitive products wind their way through North America’s supply chain and confront customers with the question: Has it been affected by freezing temperatures in transportation or storage? The company says temperatures below 32 deg F (0 deg C) can impact products as diverse as fruits, vegetables, fresh fish and meat, flowers, agricultural products, ink, chemicals, solvents, paint, medical samples, vaccines, food home delivery, and certain types of mail or freight.

BlindSpotz patent-pending freeze-warning technology can be printed directly on a package. If the temperature of the package drops at or below 32 deg F (0 deg C), a colored symbol appears on the exterior of the package to notify the supply chain quickly that product has been damaged. The CTI capability embeds the technology into an ink system that can be incorporated into the existing printing process for packaging.

CTI says the cold-chain market is expected to grow to US$293 billion dollars by 2023, a 54% increase over 2017. This growth can be attributed to the international trade of perishable foods, technological advancements in refrigerated storage and transport, government support for the infrastructural development of the cold-chain industry, and increase in consumer demand for perishable foods. Also, the company says, expansion of food retail chains by multinationals will enhance international trade and impact the growth of the cold-chain market.

Patrick Edson, CTI’s chief marketing officer, says, “Every packaging company in the world that supports food, medical, and industrial clients just got access to a new pipeline of innovation to help their clients improve quality, safety and create a better consumer experience. It just requires one print station to implement the technology.”

Adds Randall Lane, ATI’s chief strategy officer, “We’ve been challenged by the pharmaceutical industry to create a simple, low-cost freeze indicator at the vial-level that is intuitive to a medical worker and offers the option to make it easy to record data of temperature damage, drug type and location. BlindSpotz technology does all of this.

CTI will handle the technical support for all on-package printing, while ATI will manage the customer implementation of cold-chain monitoring and data in support of those opportunities.

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