Timestrip is celebrating after winning twice at the 2009 UK Packaging Awards. The smart label experts were nominated in the Labelling and Innovation award categories and came up trumps in both, for their 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 customisation 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 their existing labels. Both were successful and 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’s nine-month room temperature label worked so well that the company is now developing a 12-month ambient product as well.

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

2008 Labelling Award winners Chesapeake Branded Packaging have enjoyed great success since their win last year and Timestrip is understandably bullish about the future.

“It’s amazing to have collected not one, but two awards,” said a thrilled Reuben Isbitsky, Timestrip’s Joint CEO. “It’s particularly satisfying to be recognised 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.”

The launch of the CARGO product brought a huge amount of interest from cosmetics companies keen to use Timestrip® to add value to their own products.

Timestrip’s product development has been significant over recent months and new lines include a specific filtration product; Timestrip I.V., which works in medical applications; and further development of its cold chain range. Timestrip® is becoming the global standard in visual product labelling and the company works with market-leading companies in many industries worldwide.