CCL Label, Crown Roll Leaf, and Policiel del Peru Partner for Accurate Election Results

Published: January 01, 2001, By PFFC Staff

Peru Turns to Holograms for Accurate Election
When the Peruvian government wanted to ensure a legitimate, accurate vote in its Y2K election, the objective was to create a voter registration card with an extremely secure holographic label.

The label had to be tamper-evident, destruct in a certain way, and contain a hidden-image hologram. In addition, it had to incorporate sequential numbers required for proper distribution of the cards to various voting districts, and it had to be applied to the card by hand. Oh, and they wanted 16 million of them, ahora pronto!

Policiel del Peru S.A., a Lima, Peru-based printing, importing, and exporting company, wanted to bid on the job and learned of label manufacturer CCL Label's Memphis, TN, office by surfing the Internet and interacting with industry associates online. CCL operates 12 facilities, houses 190 presses, and offers combination, flexo, letterpress, sheet-fed and web offset, UV flexo, and digital printing. The Memphis facility is a specialty site that manufactures high-end, value- added products with a concentration on expanded content labels (ECLs). Its niche markets are agricultural and pharmaceutical, so this was new territory.

"We had experience working with holographic labels and sequential numbering independently but had never put the two together in one project," explains John Pedroli, general manager at CCL Label. CCL went directly to Crown Roll Leaf, with which it worked successfully in the past. "As we discussed the job, we learned they had bid on similar projects, so they understood what we wanted," says Pedroli.

Vincent Sementilli, creative/operative director of Crown Roll Leaf Holo-Grafx, produced a mockup for Carlos Chiabra, general manager of Policiel del Peru, in four days. Chiabra presented it to Peru's National Process of Elections Office. They liked what they saw, and Chiabra won the bid.

Within one week Crown Roll Leaf created a 2-D/3-D high-resolution pixel graphics holographic label that contained a hidden image and microtext.

Explains James Kipp, product security manager for Crown Roll Leaf, "This combination security feature -- integrating two forms of overt security features [hologram with pixel graphics and microtext], and a covert one [hidden `diamond destruct'] -- into the label was very demanding technically."

Kipp explains that the "diamond destruct" makes it impossible to lift the label off the voter registration card and reapply it to a forged card. Any tampering to the label would be obvious. In addition, Crown developed what Kipp calls a "very aggressive acrylic adhesive for the application."

One week later Crown Roll Leaf shipped the holographic film to CCL Label for sequential printing and die-cutting. To handle the sequential printing, CCL Label's plant manager Guy Kiraly developed a proprietary computerized heat-transfer process utilizing a Sato printer. The die-cutting was done on an Arsoma (Gallus) UV flexo press.

"We worked seven days, around the clock," says Pedroli. Programming the sequential printing required some tweaking, but ultimately CCL says it achieved 100% QC and shipped the holographic security labels to Chiabra in time for the election. From start to finish, the project took 23 days.