Safeguarding Trust

Counterfeit Safeguard

In the global crop protection industry, product brands have been built up through investment in research, design, and quality, and furthermore in creating and maintaining consumer satisfaction and loyalty, which is at the heart of the success of manufacturers of branded goods.

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Trust in the quality and safety of brands is fundamental to consumer loyalty. Counterfeiting erodes customer trust in brands. What was in the past only a problem for designer goods and the technical industry has now become also a problem for agrochemical products. Farmers believing that they have bought a genuine pesticide, when in fact it was a fake, blame their suppliers or the producers of the genuine product when the fake product fails. This causes a loss of trust on the farmer’s side and loss of business on the supplier’s side.

The Role Of Packaging

Closure suppliers in the agrochemical industry are increasingly challenged by its globally acting agro-customers to put more focus on the problem of counterfeiting.

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The industry spurs on devoting more R&D resources in finding closure solutions, which safeguard against increasing infringements of their intellectual property rights (IPR). To fight this counterfeiting problem, teamwork is required between packaging specialists of the agrochemical companies and suppliers.

Available Solutions

Answering the request of the agrochemical industry, a range of closures providing a slit tamper-evident bands have been developed which cover most of the current neck diameters used by the industry. The slit T/E band responds to the appeal of the industry for better brand protection, as it is difficult to copy the band technology. A specific feature is the drop down T/E band, creating a visible gap between closure and T/E band after unscrewing the closure.

A further protection is the use of closures with clipped-in and freely rotating liners, which allow for the insertion of all sorts of seals such as special vent- or customized hologram types. Another substantial contribution to protect the IPR of brand owners are closures offering a top print, company logo embossments, and special customized labels.

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