Avery Dennison Smartrac launches Circus Pro inlays

The latest products enable secured, end-to-end brand protection technology requiring an encrypted digital ‘birth record’ for packaged products, a trusted product identity validation service, and platform-agnostic consumer engagement capabilities for customers within the consumer-packaged goods, food, and beverage, apparel, and beauty markets.

The security offered by the Circus Pro family’s advanced encryption features is now enhanced by the use of the EM Microelectronic em|linq (EM4332) chip. This IC is NFC Type 2 compliant and delivers state-of-the-art radio frequency and cryptographic performance in a cost-effective package. 

The optimized cryptographic hardware implementation provides web authentication brand protection to consumers’ smartphones using a dynamically generated HMAC-SHA1 code appended to the URL stored in the NDEF container. 

‘NFC inlays and tags have become extremely popular and essential for enabling impactful consumer experiences anytime, anywhere with ubiquitous smartphones,’ commented Hal Hikita, head of product management at Avery Dennison Smartrac. ‘Our new em|linq-powered additions to the Circus Pro product family dramatically enhance the value of NFC by way of secure product authentication capabilities that protect against cloning and counterfeiting of exclusive dynamic content, thereby unlocking new and robust capabilities for engaging and captivating consumers.’

‘EM is excited to support Avery Dennison Smartrac’s solutions with its Swiss-engineered technology,’ added Christophe Ratajczak, smart systems business unit manager at EM Microelectronic. ‘We trust this partnership will unlock the full market potential behind the NFC-based product authentication.’

Circus Pro inlays are compliant with ISO 9001:2015 Quality Management and ISO 14001:2015 Environmental Management. The products are available as wet inlays with specific cryptography algorithms and a choice of memory options, work with all NFC-enabled devices and support real-time tag and message authentication.