Rochester, N.Y. — To produce tickets for a professional football franchise, Alcom Printing in Harleysville, Penn., needed a low-cost, inline method to incorporate a special security feature while printing the ticket stock.

“Our professional sports team client needed a security solution to prevent fans from entering into a paid signing event with counterfeit tickets. These events give the fans an opportunity to have face time and secure autographs with the sporting celebrities,” said Sharon Tucker, Alcom Marketing Manager. “The tickets that the client was using for these paid events did not have any security feature printed on them, which enabled people to reproduce them on a basic color copier. Our client needed a cost-effective, foolproof solution.”

To assist this customer, Alcom needed to look no further than its KODAK NEXPRESS 2500 Digital Production Color Press. With the addition of the KODAK NEXPRESS Fifth Imaging Unit for one-pass, inline printing, Alcom could use KODAK NEXPRESS Red Fluorescing Dry Ink, a virtually invisible clear ink that becomes red fluorescing when illuminated with an appropriate ultraviolet light. The ink can be used to print unobtrusive images and non-reproducible barcodes on various printed materials, which then can be read with specialized barcode readers or other UV devices. The red fluorescing barcode itself is the pass/fail authentication: If the barcode does not light up for the UV reader, the document is not genuine.

The ability to print an image that is not visible to the naked eye solved the security issues for Alcom’s client. “We provided the team with special UV flashlights that they could scan over each ticket,” Tucker said. “They could see the image and know the tickets were the real thing. This deterred anyone from trying to get in with counterfeit tickets.”

The success of Alcom’s first application for KODAK Red Fluorescing Ink quickly led the printer to offer similar applications using fluorescing ink to other customers with security issues.

“We’re working with a client that produces collectible sports trading cards,” Tucker said. “Usually, you get the package of cards and there are a few in there with holograms—these are cards that have a higher value. But foil holograms are expensive to produce. Now we’re doing some test marketing with cards printed using the KODAK Red Fluorescing Ink. Every package of cards comes with a UV flashlight, so you can see which ones are the special cards in the deck.”

Alcom sees many applications on the horizon for this special KODAK Ink, Tucker said. “I believe this is becoming a big business for us,” she said. “We’re in discussions about other products, like certificates of authenticity for signed sports memorabilia. If the brand specifies that these items are authentic and they show you how to view the watermark, that’s an added value for them. Counterfeiting is a big issue in some businesses, and this ink can help stop it.”