Kellogg’s To Laser-Brand Individual Corn Flakes To Thwart Imitation Cereals

Cereal bootleggers beware, Kellogg’s has developed a hi-tech method to stamp out imitation cereals – by branding individual Corn Flakes with the company logo.

The new technology enables the firm to burn the famous Kellogg signature onto individual flakes using lasers. Kellogg’s plans to produce a number one-off trial batches of the branded flakes to test the system. Kelloggs believes that by branding flakes, they are more capable of guaranteeing the cereal’s origins and to protect it from imitation corn flakes.

If the system is successful Kellogg plans on doing the same for their other best-loved brands including Frosties, Special K, Crunchy Nut and Bran Flakes.

“The laser uses a concentrated beam of light which focuses the energy within the beam, down to a very small spot on the Corn Flake. Mirror galvanometers are then used to steer the beam creating multiple vectors that reflect the laser from different angles and ultimately make up the image.”

The surface of the flake will appear darker giving it a toasted appearance but it will not change the taste.

Kellogg’s embarked on the project to reinforce that they don’t make cereals for any other companies and to fire a shot across the bows of makers of ‘fake flakes.’

Yesterday Helen Lyons, lead food technologist at the company, said: ”In recent years there has been an increase in the number of own brands trying to capitalise on the popularity of Kellogg’s corn flakes.

”We want shoppers to be under absolutely no illusion that Kellogg’s does not make cereal for anyone else.

”We’re constantly looking at new ways to reaffirm this and giving our golden flakes of corn an official stamp of approval could be the answer.

”We’ve established that it is possible to apply a logo or image onto food, now we need to see if there is a way of repeating it on large quantities of our cereal. We’re looking into it.”

Soruce: Telegraph