The Fraunhofer Institute for Organic Electronics, Electron Beam and Plasma Technology FEP (Dresden, Germany) has succeeded in developing a new technology for the production of ultra-smooth polymer films as part of the "OptiPerm" project. This project received funding from the European Union and the Saxony State Ministry of Economics, Labor and Transport. The technology, which was previously demonstrated on samples in A4 format, has now been successfully transferred to a roll-to-roll process with even higher surface quality. These results were presented for the first time at the AIMCAL conference in Munich, Germany in June 2018 by Dr Steffen Günther.

EVRYTHNG (New York City, New York and London, UK), a leading internet of things data management platform for consumer products, was selected among hundreds of candidates as one of the World Economic Forum’s “technology pioneers.” The fusing of physical and digital is a primary force of the Fourth Industrial Revolution which is transforming the world around us. EVRYTHNG aims to be at the forefront of this revolution, creating a new real-time knowledge network with data collected from individual consumer product items, throughout each product’s life-cycle. Consumer product manufacturers around the world, including Coca Cola, Unilever, LVMH and Diageo, are using the EVRYTHNG platform to manage trusted information and apply real-time intelligence to hundreds of millions of products — protecting brand integrity in the supply chain with visibility and pre-emptive intelligence, and connecting directly with end-customers to build brand relationships.