The pervasive use of smartphones in our modern world ensures that the taking of a photo or a video is as simple as reaching into your pocket; it is something that we all now take for granted in our day-to-day lives.

However, the ease with which any individual can now take a photograph or video on their phone presents a major challenge to any business or organisation welcoming visitors to their premises, whilst also needing to safeguard their own security interests. Such privacy and security concerns come in many forms: for example, it could be a manufacturer who wishes to protect technical know-how, or a government or public agency that wishes to restrict knowledge of sensitive infrastructure, layouts or procedures.

One solution to this problem is to ask visitors to surrender their phones, laptops or other electronics at point of entry; however, this is a rather blunt tool and comes with its own procedural headaches in regard to collection and re-distribution of devices. It is also risks offending visitors who understandably would prefer to keep valuables in their own possession.

Universeal SecureCam tamper-evident camera security labels offer a more flexible and effective solution to camera phone security. SecureCam no photography camera labels are available in a range of sizes and colours, and can be placed over phone or laptop camera lenses quickly – preventing pictures or videos from being taken. Any attempt to remove security labels and then replace in order to take a photo with the camera will clearly be demonstrated by a ‘void’ message, which appears throughout the entire SecureCam label as soon as the label is removed.

Our SecureCam labels are produced from a no-residue tamper-evident material, which means they do not leave any void material on devices once removed, and can be easily disposed of once no longer required. Each label is uniquely numbered, and application and recording of security labels can be easily incorporated into visitor registration identification procedures.

We offer SecureCam no photography labels in standard stock sizes, and can also customise for your own requirements; including your own custom size labels, company logo, unique marking, and security numbers.

If you have security concerns over the use camera phones within your workplace or organisation, please give us a call today to discuss how Universeal UK can assist you with our no photography security labels.

Event Security Safeguarding with Tamper-proof Tags

The security and safeguarding of large-scale events, such as sports stadiums and music venues, has never been more important, and those overseeing security procedures must continually review appropriate prevention and detection strategies to deal with threats posed.

Universeal UK specialises in tamper-evident identification tags, security VOID labels and security seals, used throughout industrial and commercial supply chains to ensure integrity, protection of assets, and to reduce risk.

Increasingly, such security seals are also being used as part of event security, particularly to aid in the screening of potential threats to sports matches, music festivals, concerts and other types of staged events. For example, our security seals can be used as bag security tags, to act as an indicator that particular bags have been screened and security-checked.

Our range of security products include:

Such products provide an additional security measure in reducing risks posed by unidentified packages, bags and other items.

All of our products can be customised with event branding, unique marking and unique sequential numbering. We produce many seals here in the UK and can offer a competitive, responsive service.

 Please give us a call on 01829 760000 or email [email protected] to discuss your event and how Universeal can help you.

In the fast-moving world of fashion retail and logistics, having yours or your customers’ garments delivered to the right place and at the right time, free from damage or theft is of crucial importance to the growth of a successful clothes retailer. However, many garments moved on clothes hangers are particularly difficult to transport and protect from interference, as they are hung on rails in transit and so are liable to displacement, pilferage or other damage en route.

The Universeal Coathanger Seal is one ingenious way to ensure that garments are protected and secured in transit appropriately. By securing a series of wire hangers with a coathanger seal, upto ten garments can be secured and transported together. The seal avoids bunching, creasing, and helps lightweight garments to stay on their hangers whilst in transit. The seals also reduces scope for opportunists to remove odd garments from rails, as this cannot be achieved without breaking the seal – providing the authorised user with clear evidence of breach in their supply chain.

The Coathanger seal is available in a bright red as standard, allowing for quick visual identification of intact seals. Alternatively, for volume requirements we are able to produce in a range of colours to suit your particular needs.

Clothes-in-transit present a real challenge in logistics, as safely transporting items which combine the qualities of being fast-moving, high-value and fragile is not without its difficulty. However, security solutions such as our Coathanger Seals provide one cost-effective way to manage and reduce risks to fashion goods, and to ensure that garments arrive to their point of sale looking their best.

Please contact us on 01829 760000 or [email protected] to discuss your requirements.

“Car seals” are single-use security cable seals, so-called due to their alternative use in sealing railway cars, or wagons. Such car seals can also be used in the safe and effective lockout and isolation of industrial valves. Our Flexigrip 325M car seal is available from UK with unique sequential numbering and 1m length cable for safe and secure sealing of valves.

Car seals perform well as single-use lockout devices to seal a valve in the open or closed position, typically for long durations - for example, to permanently secure a sprinkler system valve. To remove the car seal, a cutting tool is required, after which the cable will splay, ensuring that the device cannot be re-used. This effectively prevents unauthorised use of the valves, where this may be dangerous without appropriate safeguards.

Below is a visual guide to the use of car seals for valve lockout:-

Colour coding is used to indicate the safe working position of the valve, for example green for valves which should be kept in the ‘open’ position, red for ‘closed’ valves, and yellow for ‘throttled’ valves – however, a range of custom colours available upon request: this may be preferred to indicate other important information, such as the substance flowing through pipework.

Car seals for valve lockout come in a standard 1m length cable – but custom lengths are available, to suit particularly large operatus or to seal multiple valves in one operation.

In order to provide safe working practice, a system of working should be implemented to provide a full auditable record of safety lockout. For example, a regularly updated list of safety critical valves should be maintained, recording the following information.

• Safe position of valve, e.g. open or closed
• Valve location / department
• Last inspection date
• Unique identification number of the car seals

This is to ensure that you meet your responsibilities under national occupational safety legislation. For example, in the UK, the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 (PUWER), provides for safe working practices - particularly the provision of machinery with appropriate and safe methods of control, and the safe isolation of machinery from all energy sources, as required. Car Seals can act as a suitable tool as part of your health and safety protocols to ensure that your workforce is protected, and that you are in compliance with safety legislation.

If you require another type of solution to suit your particular needs, we do offer other products for valve lockout - our full range is available here.

Please contact us to discuss your requirements - [email protected] or 01829 760000

Calling all Councils! Our Uniflag big flag tags are perfect for tagging garden waste recycling containers

The implementation of effective waste recycling schemes is a major project for local Councils, who are responsible for the collection of most household waste in each of their respective local wards. The collection of garden waste is often an extra service which Councils may provide to their residents, providing an added benefit to residents in exchange for a yearly licence fee.

It therefore becomes an important consideration to appropriately identify users of garden waste collection schemes, so that local waste collection employees can quickly and easily collect recycling containers or wheelie bins covered under respective local schemes.

Universeal believe that the best way to identify waste containers is by way of printed colour-coded tags, which can be easily applied and removed as each year’s scheme begins and ends. The Uniflag big tag seal offers a cost-effective method of identification and tagging. The large 10x5cm flag head and vibrant colours (such as red, yellow, green, blue and white colours) ensure that the tag is clearly visible on all sizes of item, even in poor visibility and light conditions.

The Uniflag’s robust construction and security features ensure that the tag withstands waste collection environments, and can be customised to suit your local requirements. We are able to print logos, written instructions, dates and telephone numbers on the Uniflag tag, ensuring that important collection scheme information is always attached to the waste container.

The Uniflag is designed and manufactured in our European factory, with quick customisation and colour options. Please give us a call today to discuss your requirements and for a no-obligation sample pack and bespoke quotation.

Are you using appropriate food-contact safe ties and tags in your production facility?

The accurate identification and traceability of equipment and production batches within industry is as important to the foodstuffs and pharmaceutical industries as any other. Nylon cable ties, polypropylene seals, paper tags and industrial labels and tape are commonplace across manufacturing and processing industries in order to convey information, protect or warn against dangers, carry production data, and for many other purposes.

However, for the foodstuffs and pharmaceutical industry, the risk of contamination caused by such products is also of concern for the associated risk to all of us as consumers. Risks fall into two broad categories: products made from inappropriate materials, or from the risk of such products being destroyed and incorporated into finished product batches.

Unfortunately, products such as plastic ties and tags purchased by buyers for identification purposes may be manufactured from material which is not safe to be in direct contact with foodstuffs ingested by humans. Alternatively, it is possible that such tags may become detached from their fixing, and become shredded or otherwise destroyed by production processes, resulting in potential undetectable fragments which might find their way into finished products, contaminating them.

Both of these threats should be a major concern for the industry as a whole, and are threats which should be protected against. This is reflected in US and EU law which prescribes materials which are approved for use within safety-critical industries (for example, see regulation 2023/2006/EC on good manufacturing practice (GMP) for materials and articles intended to come into contact with food). FDA and EU Food Contact Approval regulations set out the standards which manufactured products coming into contact with foodstuffs must adhere to, including the migration limits.

In order to minimise risks and to achieve compliance with all of the legislation, BRC standards and implemented HACCP systems (Hazard and Critical Control Points), production facilitites should use appropriate industrial tags incorporated into the production process. It is very important that such facilities use tags and ties which are manufactured from food-contact approved material, and which are also metal detectable.

Metal detectability is a key way of tracing possible contaminants: our food-safe products contain a metal additive or metal component, meaning that even small parts can be detected by industrial metal detection systems during production quality control checks. For example, our plain and printed detectable cable ties contain a metal additive dispersed through the entire tie, meaning that even small fragments can be picked up by most conventional detector systems, and appropriate action taken.

Universeal has three main product ranges which will assist you in achieving compliance: detectable cable ties – available plain or printed for identification purposes; detectable loop tags for batch traceability; and detectable ID tags, which can be written on to record all many of important production information.

Detectable and food-safe products are a key protection against the threats described here, and should be considered by all food and pharmaceutical producers as an important avenue to minimise the risk of hazards to human health.

If you have any questions at all on our product range, please give us a call or email us.

 The safe and secure storage, audit and tracking of keys for critical assets such as building doors, cars, and safety deposit boxes is a major operational challenge for any business. It is crucial that keys can be swiftly identified and an audit history be maintained of all keys held, to whom keys have been issued and where keys are currently located.

Our padlock security seals, also known as “key seals” or “security key tags”, provide an ideal solution to securely identify keys. Our key tag models come with a galvanised wire hasp and polypropylene bodies for strong and robust use. They are suitable for car dealerships, car hire depots, lease vehicle companies, security companies, estate agents and many more types of users.

Our padlock seals are pre-printed with unique sequential numbering and a white face for marking with biro or roller-ball pens. They are ideal for use as car key tags for dealerships to record hand-written vehicle registration numbers against each seal’s unique serial number.

Padlock seals can also be used in conjunction with retention pegs in key management panels and boxes, to ensure that keys cannot be removed without users first inputting their own peg – quickly allowing administrators to see visually which user or department has the relevant key. Additionally, we also offer our SealTrack platform, a service available from our website and which can be accessed from any PC or mobile device. The SealTrack platform allows Universeal customers to issue and record information when sealing keys with a unique padlock seal. For example, a car dealership might record the corresponding vehicle reg. number, the user in possession of keys, and any other application-specific information which might be relevant. This software can be tailored to your specific operation, with customised fields and multiple users. For further information, please contact us about our SealTrack Platform.

Give us a ring on 01829 760000 today to discuss your requirement for security seals.

Sending parcels and documents, at home and abroad, is always fraught with risks; once it leaves your sight, who knows really who might attempt to access, steal or otherwise interfere with the consignment you are sending?

Couriered parcels are usually handled by many parties, including multiple handlers at local and regional courier depots; third-party drivers; customs inspectors, airport handlers and more. Each step in the process involves the potential for access, tampering or theft. Such access need not necessarily be illegitimate – for example, customs authorities, as part of the controlled flow of goods, are required on occasion to visually inspect the contents of a consignment to check that they conform to the description noted in export paperwork.

The problem is knowing whether or not your consignment has been handled or damaged – and whether inspections of valuable, fragile or sensitive items need to be carried out to ensure that they have not been compromised.

Without actually being there, how can you do this? One way is to secure your consignment is with tamper-evident security labels or security tape. There are many types of security label or security tape, suited to the particular requirements of the item to be sealed:-

		Residue security labels; designed so that when peeled back they leave a mark or residue on the application surface to which they were applied.
		Non-residue security labels; designed so that when removed they visually deform on the labels surface, leaving the application surface clear.
		Residue Security Tape; suitable for sealing cardboard boxes and other containers – it can be used in conjunction with a normal packaging tape dispenser. The tape is marked and leaves a VOID on the sealed packaging upon removal.
		Plain Security Tape; a plain tape which looks visually very similar to traditional brown packaging tape, so as to avoid any unnecessary attention from opportunists. However, once the tape is removed a VOID residue is left upon the box.

Such products can be applied to seal and secure any flat surface, such as inner packaging, cartons, mail bags and envelopes, to deter and minimise the risks of opening. Once applied, such labels or tape act as a quick visual reference for the user as to whether or not sealed items have been accessed: once opened, the product physically and permanently changes state with a VOID message appearing on the surface of the product.

This gives control back to the company or individual sending the parcel: for example, using tamper-evident labels will ensure that customs handlers record checks made on consignments, giving you more information on which items have been opened and handled during transit.

Take a cardboard box for example, lacking any sort of locking hasp to accommodate a plastic security seal, security labels can be placed across a carton’s point of access. This ensures that a handler, for example a custom official, is required to peel back or cut the label.

The incorporation of sequential numbering onto security labels also means that they cannot simply be easily replaced to conceal the opening; when the consignment reaches its destination, it is clear if it has been searched because recorded numbers will not match.

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Of course, security labels aren’t just limited to this sort of application, they can be used in many different ways such as asset identification and to display warranty and servicing information. Some security labels also employ other methods of tamper evidence like the destructible label, which fragments upon removal – meaning that it is impossible to remove and re-instate. 

Asset Labels	Warranty labels	Void polyester labels	Vinyl Destructible Labels

For further information please visit our Security Tapes & Labels area of our website or alternatively you can call us to discuss your requirements.

What are the relevant Standards?

The standards embodied by the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT) and International Organisation for Standardisation 17712 (ISO 17712:2013) define the minimum standards which all container security seals (also known as "barrier seals") involved in cross-border movements must conform to.

The Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT) program is one layer in U.S Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) multi-layered cargo enforcement strategy. Through this program, CBP works with the trade community to strengthen international supply chains and improve United States border security.

International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) is the world’s largest developer of voluntary international standards. The ‘standard’ is a document that provides requirements, specifications, guidelines or characteristics that can be used consistently to ensure that materials, products, processes and services are fit for their purpose, reliable and of good quality.

ISO 17712 establishes “uniform procedures for the classification, acceptance and withdrawal of mechanical freight container seals. It provides a single source of information on mechanical seals which are acceptable for securing freight containers in international commerce.”

The current ISO 17712 standard requires independent confirmation in three areas:

1.        Testing to determine a seal’s physical strength (as barriers to entry).

ISO 17712 defines three classes of security seal strength or barrier capacity: “I” for Indicative; “S” for Security; and “H” for High Security. C-TPAT requires the use of “H” class seals. Suppliers must use independent third party test laboratories to validate a seal's classification. Labs must be accredited according to ISO/IEC 17025 (General requirements for the competence of testing and calibration laboratories) to perform testing specific to ISO 17712.

2.        Auditing of manufacturer’s security-related business processes.

Poor security-related practices can undercut the effectiveness of a high-quality security seal. ISO 17712's Annex A defines over two dozen required practices, such as facility risk assessments and access controls to production and storage areas. Suppliers’ conformance with Annex A should also be demonstrated through an independent certification provider that is accredited to audit compliance with the ISO standards.

3.        Design with tamper-indicative features that generate tell-tale evidence of tampering.

Seal manufacturers must be able to demonstrate to, and obtain certification from, an accredited auditor from an independent third party organization that their high security seals have built-in tamper evidence features. If an independent third party organization accredited to ISO 17020 verifies conformity, it will provide the manufacturer with a certificate of compliance that documents that the seals submitted for review do reflect tell-tale evidence of tampering generated by attempts to defeat a correctly closed and affixed seal. Considering that most seals are tampered with in order to introduce illegal contraband or to pilferage a container, this is a welcomed improvement for high security seals –particularly those that are U.S. bound and those affixed to C-TPAT containers and trailers.

What does this mean for you as a buyer?

It means you should be aware of the credentials of the company from whom you are purchasing security products. You must be able to ensure that you are buying fully compliant security seals from a recommended supplier who can demonstrate compliance with ISO17712 certification requirements. Should you buy a product which is not compliant with ISO 17712, problems like shipping delays are highly likely.

As a buyer you should ask for proof that a potential supplier conforms fully to ISO 17712. Suppliers should be able to provide you with a summary page from the test or audit reports which acts as a certificate of conformity. 

If you have any questions please give us a call on 01829 760000 or email [email protected]