OTC Group and Xerox Thwart Pharmaceutical Counterfeiting and Theft
Package theft and counterfeiting in the pharmaceutical industry cost an estimated $75 billion to $200 billion globally each year, and the sale of counterfeit medications puts human lives at risk. To solve this challenge, OTC Group of London, Ontario and Xerox have developed a state-of-the-art digital print solution to prevent theft and counterfeiting of pharmaceutical packaging.
The Xerox Automated Packaging Solution (XAPS) includes both a workflow process and packaging approach to prevent theft and counterfeiting. It joins printing, coating, stacking and die cutting, all inline, allowing the OTC Group to produce folded cartons with advanced anti-counterfeiting measures efficiently and affordably.
In 2013, the United States passed the Drug Quality and Security Act to address counterfeiting and theft, but pharmaceutical companies have struggled to comply with the strict new requirements on the tracking and tracing of drug packaging that the Act mandates.
Existing solutions involve using an inkjet printing process to apply the necessary identifiers at the last stage of packaging. This method has proved insufficient however, and leaves ample opportunity for fraud, especially when package printing and assembly are provided by an outside vendor.
The solution developed by the OTC Group and Xerox goes beyond the legal requirements, and according to the companies, can save clients millions. For one client requiring an 800,000 printed carton production run, OTC Group estimates that the solution eliminated millions of dollars of risk exposure by providing traceability at every level, with the ability to account for every package printed – including waste – and providing data to the client in electronic format.
OTC Group was one of four companies profiled in the May issue of packagePRINTING in “Tilting the Playing Field,” which talked about some other work OTC is doing using Xerox iGen presses.
