Timestrip wins two UK Packaging Awards for cosmetics project

Timestrip has won two prizes at the 2009 UK Packaging Awards. The smart label company was nominated in the Labeling and Innovation award categories and won both for its project with cosmetics firm Cargo. The venture, which went live earlier this year, saw a nine-month Timestrip integrated into the packaging of Cargo’s leading lip-gloss.
 
Timestrip’s customization of a label for the Cargo project required it to achieve two product firsts: coming up with a nine-month room temperature product and making it significantly smaller than any of its existing labels. The Timestrip was embedded into the cap of Cargo’s lip-gloss at the point of manufacture. The consumer pushes it fully into the cap before using the gloss for the first time and the integrated Timestrip is automatically activated. It then monitors a period of nine months – the recommended ‘shelf life’ of a lip gloss – clearly indicating when that time is up and the product should be discarded. Timestrip is now developing a 12-month ambient product as well.

The Packaging Awards judges were impressed by the ‘genuinely innovative’ nature of Timestrip’s customized label, calling it ‘much needed’ and praising the integrated solution as ‘a very good way to solve the best-by date issue’. As well as a number of respected industry professionals, the panel included representatives from Waitrose, Tesco, Asda and Sainsbury’s, as well as global consumer goods giant Reckitt Benckiser, smoothie maker Innocent and confectioner Hotel Chocolat.

‘It’s amazing to have collected not one, but two awards,’ said Reuben Isbitsky, Timestrip’s joint CEO. ‘It’s particularly satisfying to be recognized for innovation – the Cargo project is a great example of the potential and versatility of the Timestrip technology. It shows how we are constantly pushing the boundaries of product development to work with different applications.’

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