Latest / Through the Line: Packaging and Processing / The Why Behind NDC-12, Sustainable Manufacturing, and Scratch & Sniff IcyHot: End of the Line

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The Why Behind NDC-12, Sustainable Manufacturing, and Scratch & Sniff IcyHot: End of the Line · Through the Line: Packaging and Processing

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Through the Line, the podcast exploring innovations and information across the packaging and processing landscape.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: From topics impacting consumer packaged goods and healthcare packaging to the latest technologies in food processing operations.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_03: Hello and welcome to End of the Line, the podcast where the editors of PMMI Media Group get together and talk about stuff.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_03: Actually, a podcast or a video, basically.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_03: I think we're now officially a podcast, in fact.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_03: Joining us as always, I am the editor-in-chief of Pro Food World Derek Teal, and I'm joined by editor-in-chief of healthcare packaging, Luz Cunho, chief editor of Packaging World Matt Reynolds, and editor-in-chief of OEA magazine Sean Riley.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_03: Let's kick things off with you, Matt.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_03: You had something interesting to share about olfactory-wise, I believe.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_02: I've been covering a lot lately on legislation and regulations with EPR and stuff.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_02: So it was good to have uh kind of a fun, slightly light-hearted packaging design story.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_02: We all remember Scratch and Sniff stickers.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_02: I think we're all children of the 80s or children that live through some of the 80s, I think.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_02: Remember, do you guys remember scratch and sniff stickers?
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_02: Sure do you yeah?
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_02: On your trapper keeper, they would work for about two to three days, and then they would just be stickers thereafter.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it gets completely scratched off.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that would happen too.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_02: The technology is back and better than ever, let's say.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_02: And it was actually Icy Hot.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_02: We're familiar with Icy Hot.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_02: It's a topical analgesic.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_02: I'm getting more familiar with it as I need it more frequently.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_02: But one of the knocks on the whole category, that like the topical pain relief, has been it's frequently smelled like a medicine cabinet, makes you smell like a medicine cabinet.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_02: One of their ways to avoid that is Icy Hot came up with three new fragrances.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_02: I'm holding energizing citrus.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_02: I feel energized.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_02: And the idea is to avoid the whole medicine-y smell.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_02: This actually has a little bit less menthol, eight per 8% instead of 16%, slightly less product, but uh you won't smell like a medicine cabinet.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_02: This comes with a set of problems for the packaging because when consumers are introduced to a brand new concept, a new smell when they've been using icy hot all their lives, what does energizing citrus smell like?
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_02: And what am I going to smell like?
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_02: So what end ends up happening is even right there in the CVS or Walgreens or wherever in the retail aisle, people are opening up the carton to try and get a whiff.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_02: Now, they won't be able to because this is a sealed roll-on that's inside.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_02: Those who commit that sin are not going to get the payoff, anyways.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_02: But regardless, what it means for CVS or whatever retailer is this is a product that can no longer be sold.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_02: Flash forward to we're talking about 80s scratch and sniff.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_02: What's old is new again.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_02: This is a new scratch and sniff capability.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_02: And it's, if you can see right there, there's one little layer area on this embossed and glossy carton where it's a company called Centosphere that worked with IcyHot.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_02: And IcyHot's the brand owner, the brand owner behind Icy Hot is Opella, by the way.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_02: But they worked with Centosphere to basically encapsulate the fragrance oil that's used.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_02: And it's the exact same fragrance oil.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_02: It's not an approximation of it, it's it's the same stuff that's in the product itself.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_02: And the encapsulation is just added to a spot varnish.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_02: So this is a traditional carton.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_02: They didn't have to change the carton.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_02: It's an embossed carton.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_02: You can't quite see it from here, but there's some spot varnish here and there to make it pop on the shelf.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_02: But this encapsulated scratch and stuff is right here.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_02: It lasts like up to a year.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_02: So it can sit on the shelf for some time.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_02: And there's a lot of it on here.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_02: So that was one of their learnings with Centosphere is like where we're used to those trapper keeper sized stickers that are yay big.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_02: You get, like we said, two or three uses out of it.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_02: And then it doesn't work anymore.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_02: This is designed to have many different consumers as they're selecting between different varieties, energizing citrus or whatever the other varieties are, and selecting between the two.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_02: You need to have multiple use cases and many consumers before somebody finally takes it off the shelves.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_02: So a lot of interesting learnings there.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_02: And the best part of it for IcyHot and for Opella is they didn't require a whole lot of tweaks.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_02: This is the same cartoning equipment they've always used.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_02: The encapsulated little spheres are extremely robust.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_02: They just had to be careful about the embossing because that is in intentionally in the converting process, the embossing is going to create a raised surface.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_02: They had to be careful about that.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_02: And if you can tell, this is a little embossed area that's right above or right beneath the scratch and sniff.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_02: So, anyways, this is coming soon if it's not already on your retail shelves.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_02: And uh yeah, go catch a whiff next time you're at Walgreens.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_03: Ripping open a pack ripping open a package just to test a product inside the eighth deadly sin.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_03: So Liz, we were talking earlier, asking earlier at Matt earlier on that package if there's an NDC code.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_03: You had something new about that?
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_04: I had three interviews this week about the National Drug Code Drug Code, NDC 12, which is a new thing that the FDA is putting into effect in 2033.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_04: Last week was the Healthcare Distribution Alliance Traceability Seminar in DC.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_04: And from there, the conversation was really about the NDC 12.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_04: It's a huge changeover that companies are going to have to make from 10 digit, which is the existing drug code on packages, to 12.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_04: And it sounds simple, but of course, there's implications when we talk about what that looks like.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_04: It's your printing envision systems, your barcodes, your software, inventory management.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_04: And this is far reaching.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, Matt, thank you for it does contain it, it does have an NDC code.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_02: So the segue was successful.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_02: Well done.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_04: So if you think about it, so Icy Hot has to change all their product to that 12-digit code, right?
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_04: And then phase out the 10-digit by 2033.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_04: And then distributors have to be able to scan it.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_04: Pharmacists, CVSs of the world have to be able to input the new products.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_04: And everyone's barcode and label and readers have to be able to read it.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_04: So it's a big overall systems undertaking that the industry has some time to do, but the time to start what I'm hearing is really now because it's going to take that time.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_04: But I wanted to share with you guys what was really interesting.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_04: I interviewed Kayla Schenkel from the Healthcare Distribution Alliance.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_04: She's the VP of regulatory affairs.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_04: And she talked about how someone from the FDA presented like the real why behind why are we doing this?
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_04: Is it just something else the FDA wants us to do?
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_04: And the answer is no.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_04: We really are going to run out of drug codes.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_04: So the FDA estimates we burned through about a thousand a year and new, it's like maybe like new products, right?
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_04: National drug codes.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_04: The last estimate was there's about 10,000 unique codes left.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_04: So you do the math, that's about 10 years of new codes.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_04: But the kind of pushing force to kind of get this moving is during COVID, the industry went through about six or seven thousand NDCs just during that like peak COVID time.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_04: And one of the reasons was everyone started making hand sanitizer, as random as that is.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_04: Remember, all the companies were doing it, everything had a unique drug code.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_02: So the the distilleries like switched over almost extensively because they were totally prepared for that.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_02: And even some breweries, they had all the right equipment and they just switched over in that matter of days.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_02: Sorry, I no but I digress.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_04: So if that happens, they're not saying it will, but if something like that happens again to scale, we are gonna run out of NDCs well before the 10-year mark.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_04: So that's kind of why the push of doing it now.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_04: So I thought that was pretty interesting.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_04: The good thing is once it's done, we won't have this issue again for 900 years.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_04: So we are in good shape.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_04: But interesting information about the why if you really dig into it, we really will run out of numbers.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_04: So it's interesting to hear that.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_04: And then this consensus is start now, evaluate where the NDC is in your company, who who owns that, bring in all the different parties at your company.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_04: So, you know, it's not gonna happen in isolation.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_04: Everyone really has to work together for this one.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_04: But we'll be covering this topic for the next seven years.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_04: We even have a webinar series next year about it.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_04: So pretty interesting stuff, but the why behind it's pretty compelling.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, 900 years.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I don't know if we'll be around.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_03: I guess that's a segue to your topic, Sean, and that it's AI.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_03: Is that gonna take over?
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_03: Will we be around or serving our AI overlords?
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_02: We're gonna upload our consciousness consciousnesses in such a way that we'll be around to worry about the 13-digit NDC code and all that.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: That should buy us another 900 years.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, why not?
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_04: We'd probably go to 14, right?
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: That's the goal.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: So basically, what I'll I had this study that came across my desk from Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute, which manufacturing institute's a pretty big deal in our world in terms of research and advocating for manufacturing.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: And the study was expanding the skilled manufacturing workforce with AI and particularly manufacturing technician employment, the people that are kind of work on the machines, is that's gonna grow, I think, six times faster than employment in production occupations.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: And they just think it's due to retirement or people moving up to new or different skill levels.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, the story really isn't the typical you hear AI and you're thinking AI is gonna swoop in and solve the problem the way it's solving every other kind of, I don't want to say lower level, but unskilled labor to skilled labor problem right now.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: But the way that they framed it is first they framed it that the next wave of technicians are gonna come from adjacent industries.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: They've the study found that there's a lot of workers in other industries like construction, retail, warehousing, who have skill sets that could transfer over to manufacturing, which at first you think sounds weird, maybe not, but they through this study they came up with ways that they could transfer from those careers to these higher-paid career jobs in manufacturing using AI as kind of a bridge.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: It kind of throws back to our digital dentist that we talked about a couple months ago.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: You can have a new manufacturing maintenance technician who might not know anything could capture a video of unfamiliar equipment, AI analyzes it and receives, gives recommended troubleshooting steps within minutes, and that kind of lowers the barrier for entry for less experienced workers, but it also frees experienced technicians to focus on higher valued tasks.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: But I think the bigger point of the study was how they were gonna add AI fluency on as a as almost like a job, as part of the technician's job description.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: And by doing that, they think that's gonna make it a more appealing job, especially to like Gen Z or millennials that everybody's talking about how the world is being taken over by AI.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: And now you're tying these technician jobs, which most people aren't associating with AI, as ooh, if I get this job, they're going to teach me how to become AI fluent.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to quote unquote have a job that's safe, but I'm also going to be working in a sector that's new, that's it, that's sexy, that's advancing, that's not just slinging a ham hammer for let's not that there's anything wrong with that, but like it's a way of kind of framing the industry in a different way, of making it sound more high-tech, more skilled.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: So it's going to bring in kind of an unskilled workforce with the idea that it they're going to be trained up.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought that was just an interesting way of presenting AI as a tool beyond just what it can teach you, but also in sort of the marketing of the job.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_02: It's an upskilling device.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: And it and it is by saying that I'm going to take this job, I'm going to become AI fluent, that that's a pretty big deal to say that to somebody who's has no idea what AI is or to what level they can function with it.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_03: And it seems given the typical fight for laborers to begin with, that having that advantage of being able to bring in people say, Hey, you have rudimentary skills, but through AI, we can bring you into that.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: And you're going to become a quote unquote AI expert, which again sounds is a very marketable way of positioning the industry.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_02: It's like historically, and one of the big biggest issues is or biggest hurdles has been the requirement to learn ladder logic and code on PLCs.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_02: That's the difference between a skilled and unskilled operator.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_02: You're breaking down those barriers through AI.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_02: AI becomes the common language democratizer that that actually, yeah, I can imagine then it works both ways in that it's upskilling the people who you know they no longer have to have those ladder logic or plc or various different languages because the AI speaks that.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_02: They just need to have to be able to work the AI to get the outcomes they want.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_02: So interesting way of going about it.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_03: And I suppose I could have used any segue for what I was going to talk about today.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_03: And that could I guess I'll go with this one.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_03: They're talking about off-gassing with citrus.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_03: There is a plant that's just being that there you go.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_03: That ground was just struck for or broke.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_03: Ground was just broke.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_03: There we go.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_03: In Sao Paulo, Brazil, on a new plant that is going to be using citrus, the residue from orange juice products, so citrus products, to create biogas.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_03: And through that to generate, I don't know how many how much power they're going to be generating, but it's going to be a huge site that's going to be two million square feet next door to Bedterborough juice processing hub.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_03: And when it's complete, it'll be the world's biggest plant of its kind.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_03: And so yeah, it's going to be using that raw organic effluent and turning that into power.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_03: And that was just interesting seeing that.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_03: Whereas at the same time, we just sent Casey, our sort of absent associate editor, but he just got back from touring a plant, so he gets a day off.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_03: Turning a plant in Wisconsin, Klondike Cheese.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_03: And what they're doing, it's not quite the same, but it's very circular in the sense that, and I'll let him talk about it more in the future.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_03: But the idea is that they're taking a lot of the wash down water from the cleaning and turning that remediate or not remediating it, but blanket on the term, of course, and blanket on names again.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_03: But they're taking that and they're treating it, and then they're using that to grow alfalfa, using that water to grow alfalfa that feeds the cows, which in turn generate the milk, which in turn generates the cheese.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_03: So it's a very circular sort of operation.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_03: And I'll let go let him go in more into that specifically later.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_03: But it was just interesting to see a couple of sustainability stories.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_03: I know Matt had the market cornered regarding sustainability and packaging, and we haven't seen that a whole lot on the manufacturing side, mostly because it's been seen as a luxury.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_03: But I think that plants, given the in the rising costs for everything, particularly uh utilities, I think you're going to be seeing plants turning to these more sustainable type of options, circular type of options, save money, ironically, that they would be turning that way.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_03: Usually it would be like again, it'd be viewed as a luxury because it's kind of costly to install some of these systems.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_03: But if the power in general goes up, this is a good alternative, I think.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_03: It's because again, that's always the problem with a lot of these sustainable options, is that it's the upfront cost.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_03: Where upfront it might cost a lot, but in the long term you pay off.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_03: And as the cost of utilities rises, that ROI becomes quicker, which in turn for for these systems.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_03: So I was I just thought it was interesting, and I don't know if we're gonna start seeing a trend on that, but yeah, thought I'd bring that up.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_04: I like it now.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_04: Derek, when you say Klondike, my brain goes to the Klondike bar.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I'm is that not the same company?
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_03: It is not the same company, it is cheese.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_03: They do yogurt as well, but it is not the same company.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, but it is behind the cheddar curtain.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: It is behind the cheddar curtain.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, yeah.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_03: Casey was actually telling me that he went to a uh restaurant the day the day before and they served a slab of meat with a slab of cheese encompassed by rye.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_03: And that was it.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_03: No condiments whatsoever.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_03: You really did they did give some mustard on the side, apparently, but he said that this is what you're gonna get.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_03: You're not gonna need anything else.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_02: He was also dangerously close to the new Glaris brewery up there in Wisconsin.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe that's why he's taking the day off.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_02: He might be nursing something here.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe, yeah.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know what he did on the way, how long he took to get home, but yeah, maybe.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_04: Interesting.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_03: Anyway, I think that's gonna do it.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_03: Everybody, thanks for talking and sharing your stories today.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_03: Appreciate it.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for putting up for those on video.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_02: Our special guest, Janie the dog, is in over my right shoulder here.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_02: So very luckily, she didn't do anything too embarrassing.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_04: Luckily, uh comfy.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_03: Anyway, all right.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe she was better to look at.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_03: Better than me, anyways.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_03: Anyway, all right.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks, everyone in the audience.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_03: Appreciate it, and we will catch you next time on End of the Line.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening to Through the Line Packaging and Processing.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: You can listen to more episodes on all streaming platforms.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: Be sure to visit us at packworld.com, profoodworld.com, and healthcarepackaging.com for more packaging and processing news.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: This podcast was edited by Bree Guns.