One of the most popular trends in pharmaceutical packaging is the use of tamper evident neck banding. Common for pharma, food and beverage products, heat shrinkable tamper evident seals offer a number of significant benefits. Below, we'll take a look at the top reasons why tamper evident banding continues to be a foundational packaging method.
Tamper evident seals serve as a way to ensure consumer safety. For many pharmaceutical products, tamper evident banding is a requirement, greatly increasing the integrity of the product. The banding helps to prevent opening of the product without detection, as it can’t be resealed once it’s open, without a clear visual indicator. Tamper evident banding, therefore, ensures that the product remains untouched since its bottling, preventing many forms of contamination.
Tamper evident bands make products more appealing to consumers. If a customer is purchasing a pharmaceutical or food product, or one that they intend to consume, they want to know that the product is sterile and untouched. Tamper evident banding gives them that peace of mind at the point of purchase when choices between brands are made. Unlike an inner seal hidden by the cap, when a customer buys a product that has a neck band they can easily tell if it has been opened or not. Consumers can rest assured that the product has not been touched or tampered with at any point since it was packaged.
Grazing or sampling products off the shelf that have not been purchased is a real problem in many supermarkets. However, tamper evident banding prevents this from being a concern. Not many people are willing to work at breaking a seal to try out a product, and even if they do, employees will be able to recognize that the product has been opened and take it off the shelf. This enables tamper evident banding to serve as both a deterrent to grazing as well as a way to notice when grazing has occurred.
Tamper evident banding can help improve the integrity of packaging by securing the lid of the package to the container, or a dosage cup, which are often secured over the cap by a heat shrinkable seal. While this provides security against tampering, it can also help maintain freshness and prevent accidental mishaps in which the lid is separated from the container as well.
Our machines can also produce various types of perforations, from vertical to horizontal and angular, depending on their function. We can provide a range of “cut-to-land ratios” of the perforator blades, which determine performance, strength, and ease of removal. It is the perforations that are broken during opening that provide the visual tamper evidence.
Tamper evident seals can be applied down the neck of bottles, hiding the fill line. Fill line coverage compensates for the variability of liquid filling machines and container volumes, particularly of glass. Brands don’t want to give consumers the impression that bottles are “under filled” due to package variability. A neck band in this area also can serve as a surface for graphics and marketing design elements such as logos and colors, enhancing package appeal.
Any machinery applying tamper evident banding needs to be flexible in order to fit various packaging shapes and sizes. PDC manufactures a broad range of neck banding machinery for the application of heat shrinkable tamper evident seals. PDC tamper evident banding machinery is engineered for maximum flexibility with regardless of product shape, including round, oval, rectangular and triangular.
By building additional consumer confidence, increasing the security of the product, improving the integrity of the packaging, and more, tamper evident banding continues as one of the most beneficial packaging methods. If you would like to learn more about using tamper evident banding on your products, we invite you to contact us today. Our experts will be happy to help you find a solution that is perfect for your products. We would be happy to mock up your packages with tamper evident neck bands in the PDC Shrink Lab, and send you samples and a video for your review.
© PDC International Corp. 2016
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