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Digital printer ‘XAPS’ would-be counterfeiters

Digital carton printing company OTC Group helps its customers thwart counterfeiting and theft with Xerox tracking system.

So you work for a pharmaceutical manufacturer that’s looking to its carton supplier to handle serialization and anti-counterfeiting tasks to deliver patient safety and compliance with government mandates such as the Drug Quality and Security Act (DQSA).

One approach that’s helping digital print and process technology provider OTC Group is the Xerox® Automated Packaging Solution, or XAPS.

Installed at OTC Group’s London, Ontario, Canada facility about two years ago, XAPS provided OTC Group entry into the packaging world. Prior to the installation, OTC Group printed exclusively commercial jobs, including direct mail pieces.

“We manufacture folding cartons and labels and other collaterals digitally for a number of industries, but pharmaceuticals represent a key market because of serialization,” says Adam Egan, OTC Group’s Vice President of Packaging.

Sheet-fed carton digital printing is the company’s focus, working in thicknesses from “paper grade” to 20 pt. As is often the case in digital printing, OTC Group specializes in short-run jobs for manufacturers and consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies, and for other folding carton suppliers.

Egan says, “Counterfeiting is very significant, and serialization is a necessity in large part due to DQSA in the U.S., and similar government mandates in other countries. We do work for products in South Korea where their security standards for packaging are already pretty stringent.

“Anti-counterfeiting is not necessarily an issue that’s mandated but it’s a huge problem for pharmaceutical companies. There are billions of dollars worth of counterfeit pharmaceuticals being sold. The World Health Organization says approximately a million people die each year because of counterfeit pharmaceuticals. It’s especially a problem in the third world, but its becoming more of a first-world problem.”

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