With the successful implementation of regulatory codes for important products such as general medicine, veterinary medicine, and infant formula, pesticides, as an important agricultural input product, have gradually attracted people's attention. Especially with the continuous growth of people's economic income and the gradual improvement of their living standards, people are more concerned about the nutrition and safety of food. Especially with the frequent reporting of highly toxic pesticides and pesticide residues, people's awareness of the quality and safety of agricultural products is increasing. The design, synthesis, processing, application, and management of pesticide molecules will also be required to be safe and transparent. Since the General Office of the State Council issued the Opinions on Accelerating the Construction of Important Product Traceability System, the pesticide product traceability system called for by the public has gradually been put on the agenda.
To achieve traceability of pesticide products in production, transportation, storage, circulation, sales, and other aspects, and ensure food safety, it is necessary to provide a unique identity identification for pesticide products, that is, to use QR codes as carriers to identify physical objects.
The common packaging forms for pesticide products in the current market mainly include bag packaging, bottle packaging, box packaging, as well as box and barrel packaging. According to these different forms and materials of packaging, different coding methods need to be applied.
There are three main ways to assign QR codes for pesticide products, namely: printing, online, and offline. IoT identification devices that can be used according to the characteristics of pesticides include: thermal transfer printing (TTO), thermal foaming (TIJ), laser machines, UV, labeling machines, etc.
TTO
Heat transfer printing technology is a rising star in the contemporary labeling industry. Due to its flexibility, clear printing quality, and consumables cost, it has been widely used in film or flat paper boxes, automatic packaging production lines to print text, patterns, production dates, batch numbers, barcodes, and randomly changing information, such as variable barcodes and anti-counterfeiting traceability information. TTO can meet the requirements of adding heat transfer printing equipment to the lamination, bag making, rewinding, slitting, shaping and other processes after printing in the printing factory to achieve the coding of product packaging. It can also add heat transfer printing equipment to the automatic packaging (filling) equipment of production enterprises to achieve the coding of product packaging. For plastic bags and film packaging of pesticide products, heat transfer printing technology can provide a comprehensive solution.
TIJ
Hot foam inkjet technology belongs to a type of high-resolution inkjet technology, which can be applied on bags, paper boxes, film rolls, and labels. It can meet the requirements of online printing of high-quality, high-definition, and high recognition rate variable QR code identification information, helping to achieve product traceability coding and high reading rate requirements. It is suitable for production enterprises or printing plants. Its characteristic is flexible coding, which can safely and reliably spray unique and high-resolution QR code identification information directly on product packaging. Thermal foaming inkjet technology belongs to non-contact direct printing, with fast speed and high resolution, suitable for large-scale and small packaging assembly line production.
Laser machine
Pharmaceutical companies usually choose to print information such as the pharmaceutical third phase (production date, expiration date, batch number), electronic supervision code, and anti tampering goods flow code on the label of round bottles. Traditional ink coding is prone to transfer printing or can be erased and damaged by humans. At this point, the advantages of laser coding are evident. Laser coding machines, due to their non-contact coding, can meet the requirements of fast coding speed. They concentrate on the surface of the marked object with extremely high energy density, vaporize the surface material in a very short time, and precisely engrave exquisite two-dimensional code patterns or text by controlling the effective displacement of the laser beam; At the same time, laser marking is clear and permanent, and cannot be wiped or changed, with a certain anti-counterfeiting effect. Laser can achieve good coding for plastic bottles and glass bottles.
UV Machine
UV inkjet printer is actually a type of inkjet equipment that uses UV ink. In the field of inkjet coding, it belongs to larger inkjet equipment. UV ink has a textured texture after being solid, and UV has the characteristics of high hardness of the ink layer, good adhesion, abrasion resistance, solvent resistance, and high gloss. UV inkjet printers are mainly designed for inkjet coding of variable data, including text, numbers, one-dimensional barcodes, two-dimensional barcodes, images, and common patterns. In the application of pesticide QR codes, UV can achieve single column, multi link packaging and simultaneous internal and external coding, especially when spraying images on flexible substrates such as plastic films, its adhesion and toughness are more significant.
Labeling Machine
The printing and labeling machine is an ideal choice for identifying high-resolution text, barcodes, QR codes, and graphics on containers, pallets, and shrink films, with high contrast and excellent barcode reading rates. By using a printing and labeling machine to print QR codes and attach them to product packaging, enterprises can achieve precise labeling of labels on packaging even at high speeds. This can be seamlessly integrated into existing production lines, ensuring existing production efficiency.
However, with the continuous improvement of regulations, automation requirements, and production line speed in the pharmaceutical industry, labeling machines are no longer able to meet the online coding requirements of products, and labeled products can be torn and covered. As a result, the anti-counterfeiting effect that pesticide products want to achieve is not good.
In fact, for pesticide enterprises, implementing a QR code traceability system is no longer an insurmountable problem, because the IoT labeling industry has already had very mature solutions after experiencing cases such as human medicine, veterinary medicine, and infant formula. Especially driven by policy standards, implementation does not require a long transition period. Enterprises only need to establish a cooperative relationship with the IoT labeling industry based on their actual situation, using a coding+labeling system+system integration workflow, and choose the most suitable solution reasonably, which is the fundamental.
