According to studies, counterfeit products account for
more than 3% of world trade. But for companies, it’s not just the lost sales
due to cheap counterfeits of branded products that counts. It can be much more
expensive if you can’t prove in court or in complaints and warranty cases that
it is your own product, or in other cases, that it is not your own product! To
minimize these risks, techniques for the unique identification of products,
which are similar to high-security printing techniques, are being used more and
more frequently.

 

UV and IR active security pigments are also used in
the field of product authentication. Here, users expect not only highly
efficient security pigments or security printing inks, but complete solutions
including detectors tailored to the security features. The pigments must meet
high physical and chemical challenges here, as they must be applied to very
different surfaces or incorporated into materials (e.g. textiles, paper (pulp),
printing inks, synthetic fibers, and polymers) using different processes like injection
molding, coating, printing or foil manufacture.

 

The pigments are incorporated either through
intermediate products such as toners, concentrates, additive pastes, master
batches and chips, or directly as free-flowing pigments. This incorporation
process can easily be set up to occur on-site, for seamless integration into
existing production processes.