The bio-reactive food expiry label shows consumers when their food is going off in a tactile way, by becoming bumpy.
Smart data
The label sits on the package and decays in the same process the food would.
According to Laurence Kayson, chief business development officer, Mimica, with the right approach, sensors and indicators can address the date coding waste problem using smart data.
Kayson will be talking more about the issue at the AIPIA (Active & Intelligent Packaging Industry Association) Active & Intelligent Packaging World Congress and Hackathon 2017 in Amsterdam from November 2-3.
“Mimica Touch is a data driven product that uses a biological model to show an accumulative effect of the changes in the packaged food in real time without the need for a reading device,” he said.
Bump mark was oiginally created by Solveiga Pakstaite, an industrial design and technology student from Brunel University London.
Mimica Touch is now a patent-pending bio-responsive food expiry label that reacts to the environment around it and provides tactile information.
The way it works is the gel inside Mimica Touch is made from a by-product from the food industry: gelatine.
Temperature changes
Because it is a foodstuff itself, it behaves in the same way packaged food does due to the molecular composition.
The gel reacts to changes in the packaged food and to temperature changes in the cold chain. These result in a molecular breakdown that then translates to tactile information for the user.
Mimica Touch has been designed to make use of existing packaging manufacturing equipment - it is a scaled down package consisting of a plastic tray and a lidding film with the gel inside.
The label can be made on site and is adhered to existing packages making it highly adoptable.
Kayson’s Key Note: ‘Dealing with the downside of date codes in a data age’ will be at the AIPIA Congress 2017 on Friday November 3 from 2:40pm - 3:05pm.
Click here to register for the event.