中文There is a deadline coming for the barcode, and it is closer than most people in packaging are behaving like it is.
GS1 Sunrise 2027 is the industry’s move toward retail checkouts that can read 2D codes — the QR-style square — instead of relying solely on the striped barcode that has sat on packaging for fifty years. Retailers around the world are gearing up for it. Which means the pressure is about to land squarely on the manufacturers who actually put codes on packs.
Markem-Imaje has just launched two products aimed straight at that problem: Colos 2D Activate and Colos 2D Engage, backed by its consulting services.
What they actually do
Both are software-as-a-service enterprise products. They let global CPG and FMCG brands create, organise, activate and manage static and dynamic GS1 Digital Link QR codes.
The two halves split along a line that will feel familiar to anyone who has watched marketing and operations argue over a label:
Colos 2D Activate is the operations side. Full control of GS1 Digital Link QR codes after printing — digital content management, URL destination management, scan data analytics, enterprise data integration.
Colos 2D Engage is the marketing side. Design, publish and manage consumer experiences through a drag-and-drop interface. Mobile landing pages, web forms, contests, gamification campaigns, multilingual experiences that evolve across a product’s lifecycle, plus analytics showing how consumers interact across locations and over time.
Viktor Hermansson, global marketing director at Markem-Imaje, put the pitch this way:
“Our new Colos 2D Activate and Colos 2D Engage solutions enable brands to transform QR codes from a compliance requirement into powerful digital experiences that deliver real value to consumers. With GS1 Digital Link, a single QR code can support retail checkout, supply chain visibility, regulatory transparency and personalized consumer engagement.”
Why one code doing five jobs is a genuinely big deal
Here is the thing that makes this more than a software launch.
Today, a pack might carry a barcode for the till, a separate QR code for a marketing campaign, a lot code for traceability, and a date code. Four different marks, four different reasons, four different chances to get something wrong on the line.
A GS1 Digital Link QR code collapses those functions. Same square handles retail checkout, supply chain visibility, regulatory transparency and consumer engagement.
And unlike a traditional static QR code, the destination is not fixed forever. Page content can adapt based on location, language, time, or where the customer is in their journey. The example Markem-Imaje gives is concrete: a shopper scanning in-store might get a promotional offer, while the same person scanning the same product at home gets recipes, usage instructions, complementary product recommendations or sustainability information.
Meanwhile the manufacturer captures scan analytics and finally learns something about what happens to a product after it leaves the warehouse. For most packaging operations, that visibility currently ends at the loading dock.
The consulting bit is the honest part
What I find genuinely credible here is that Markem-Imaje did not just ship software and wish everyone luck. It paired the platform with implementation experts who do a structured assessment of the production environment, coding processes and operational readiness.
The service includes a full-day on-site review followed by practical recommendations to identify gaps, prioritise investments and build a roadmap. The assessment covers production equipment, software infrastructure, data management and coding processes.
That tells you something the marketing copy does not say outright: the software is not the hard part. Getting a plant ready is the hard part. If a vendor is offering to send someone to walk your floor for a day before selling you the platform, that is an implicit admission that plenty of plants are going to discover unpleasant surprises. Better to find them now.
The plumbing nobody gets excited about
The capability list runs deep, and it is worth reading properly because this is where projects live or die:
- Automated generation of compliant static or dynamic GS1 Digital Link QR codes aligned with SKU and GTIN data
- Integration with production systems to embed dynamic data — GTIN, lot number, best-before date, serial number, manufacturing facility
- Packaging integrity controls and vision inspection to ensure barcode quality and error-free coding
- Automated synchronisation with ERP and other business systems, eliminating manual data entry
- Centralised management of QR code inventory, URL destination settings and digital product experiences
Data flows in through APIs from Colos, ERP systems, CRM platforms and loyalty or coupon programmes, with the Colos platform acting as a single source of truth for production, product and packaging data.
That vision inspection line deserves a moment. A dynamic QR code that scans badly is worse than an old-fashioned barcode that scans reliably. If the code is now carrying checkout, traceability and consumer engagement all at once, a poorly printed square does not just annoy a marketer — it stops the till.
The regulatory wall behind all of this
Sunrise 2027 is not arriving alone. The platform is positioned against a stack of requirements landing more or less simultaneously:
- The European Digital Product Passport (DPP)
- The US Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA)
- The EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR)
- Local regulations across Southeast Asia
Every one of those pushes in the same direction: product data has to be accessible, verifiable and linked to the physical item. Beyond consumer engagement, the platform supports regulatory compliance, supply chain visibility, traceability and brand protection — including access to lot status, recall notifications, nutrition information and sustainability data.
That recall point is not a footnote. Linking production data to a product’s digital identity means a recall can potentially be scoped to specific lots rather than sweeping entire product lines off shelves. Anyone who has lived through a broad recall knows exactly what that difference is worth.
What to do about it now
The platform supports both pre-print and in-line printing environments, and scales from pilot projects to enterprise-wide deployment. That flexibility is doing something important — it lets you start small.
And starting small, soon, is the entire point. Sunrise 2027 is not a date you can address in Q4 2026 with a software purchase. It touches your coding equipment, your data quality, your ERP integration and your label artwork. Every one of those has a lead time, and they run in sequence, not in parallel.
The plants that treat this as a compliance chore will spend money and get a square that works at a till. The plants that treat it as a data project will end up knowing things about their products and customers that they have never had access to before. Same deadline, same investment, completely different outcome.
Source: Labels & Labeling, 26 August 2026 — “Markem-Imaje launches GS1 software”
