Chromatic Technologies (CTI) has introduced a new freeze-warning technology that can be printed directly on a package to provide economical, on-package freeze alert to ensure the quality of food, industrial and medical products.

The BlindSpotz technology has been developed in partnership with American Thermal Instruments (ATI) to help protect the brand and consumer of medical supplies and foods, while saving money by lowering product waste.

CTI said that the new technology can be embedded into an ink system, which can be incorporated into the existing printing process for packaging.

The BlindSpotz freeze spot technology generates a colored symbol exterior of the package if the package temperature of the drops at or below 32° F (0° C), thus alerting that the supply chain that product has been damaged.

CTI is responsible for handling the technical support for all on-package printing whereas ATI will manage the customer implementation of cold-chain monitoring and data.

Now billions of packages of lettuce, strawberries, flowers, paint and vaccines can be individually inspected for quality and safety.

ATI chief strategy officer Randall Lane said: “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.”

The new BlindSpotz technology is available in UV and water-based flexo, water-based gravure, wet offset, UV-Wet offset ink formulas, as well as finished devices.

CTI chief marketing officer Patrick Edson said: “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 and the technology can be implemented.”