Finalist Interview: ColorSensing’s automatic colour recognition technology

You’re a finalist in the Sustainability Awards 2022. Congratulations! To start off, could you summarise your entry, the ColorSensing automatic colour recognition technology, in less than 50 words?

ColorSensing helps food packing companies and retailers cut down food waste thanks to a digital, multiparametric and cost-effective smart label to check possible package leaks, cold chain breaks, and the real freshness of the product. As a result, they ensure the quality and safety of their products while improving their profitability.

Why do you think the judges were impressed with your entry? Tell us about what is innovative about your project and/or about its impact on packaging sustainability.

Thanks to a smart label that integrates different reactive intelligent inks camouflaged in a QR code, we are capable of monitoring a variety of parameters, such as packging and ripening gases or temperature, that allow us to detect possible package leaks, cold chain breaks and premature spoilage along all the supply chain, just taking a simple picture of the label, with any kind of camera, even a smartphone, anytime, anywhere.

When and how do you intend to launch/commercialize this innovation?

We intend to start the commercialization of our first MVP at the end of 2023, after EFSA approval, and it will start in Spain, where we already have contact with interested meat packing companies, to spread to rest of Europe afterwards. For that, we will start with small and medium size meat packing companies, with whom it is easier to implement pilots, and then we will present the results to retailers.

You’re shortlisted for the Active & Intelligent (Pre-Commercialized) category. What do you see as the key demands, challenges and opportunities in relation to active and intelligent packaging?

The key demands, challenges and opportunities in the intelligent packaging field are related to sustainability and transparency with the consumer. Consumers now more than ever interested in having information about what they consume, and in the environmental impact of those products. One of the key differential aspects of our solution is that the technology behind allows us to adapt the information that each kind of user is going to receive from the reading of the label. This means that from the same raw data (the physical and chemical variables that we are able to measure from the package), we can deliver the specific information that the different users need to know. For example, the information that the quality control team needs is not the same that the information that the shop personnel or the consumer needs. Thus, we can be transparent but with high flexibility to adapt the solution for each stakeholder.