Intelligent packaging – review

Abstract

The article presents a discussion about intelligent packaging for monitoring and providing information about the product, its quality and exposures during transportation, storage, retail and usage. Intelligent packaging is defined as any packaging containing internal or external indicator which changes its properties by external conditions (e.g. temperature) or changes inside the packaging (e.g. Presence of metabolites produced during products’ aging). The author presents the principle of operation of indicators along with different examples (quality, temperature and time (TTI), presence of gas). Introduction of new technologies of preparing intelligent elements e.g. by printing, thus lowering cost of manufacturing, will support their more common use