CARTAMUNDI TURNHOUT

Their core work

Cartamundi Turnhout is a large Belgian industrial manufacturer — the world's largest playing card producer — that used H2020 funding to extend its core printing and card manufacturing expertise into smart, connected physical products. Their R&D work focused on embedding NFC technology directly into printed game cards and packaging, and later on developing capacitive identification tokens. They bring rare industrial-scale manufacturing capability to the challenge of integrating electronics into mass-produced printed products. As coordinator on both projects, they drove the agenda for applying advanced materials (metal oxide layers) and sensing technologies to objects that are manufactured in the hundreds of millions.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Their first project (PING, 2015-2017) was rooted firmly in their core business — applying NFC and smart-packaging technology to the game card domain they know best, with metal oxide design as the enabling materials science. By the second project (CAPID, 2017-2019), the game-specific framing had disappeared entirely: the focus shifted to capacitive identification tokens, a technology with applications well beyond entertainment. This signals a strategic move from sector-specific product innovation toward more generalisable identification and authentication technologies that could serve logistics, access control, and anti-counterfeiting markets.

Cartamundi appears to be using its printing and card manufacturing base as a platform to enter the broader smart-token and physical authentication market, moving away from game-specific applications toward general-purpose identification.

How they like to work

Cartamundi coordinated both of their H2020 projects, consistently taking the lead role rather than joining as a partner. Their consortia were relatively small — an average of roughly six partners per project — spread across six countries, suggesting focused, goal-driven teams rather than broad exploratory networks. This points to an organisation that enters EU projects with a clear industrial objective and selects partners precisely for the technical gaps they need to fill.

Cartamundi built a network of 12 unique consortium partners across 6 countries through two projects, reflecting a European reach typical of ICT-focused RIA consortia. No partner overlap data is available to assess loyalty, but the six-country spread suggests deliberate recruitment of specialised expertise from across Europe.

What sets them apart

Cartamundi is almost certainly unique in the H2020 database as a mass-market physical product manufacturer — playing cards in the billions — that is also an active R&D coordinator in smart-token electronics. This combination of extreme-scale precision printing, materials science, and embedded electronics integration is not something a pure electronics firm or a pure research institute can replicate. A consortium looking to bring connected-object technology to high-volume consumer or industrial products would struggle to find a more credible manufacturing anchor.

Highlights from their portfolio

• PING
  Combined NFC electronics, metal oxide materials research, and mass-market game card manufacturing in a single project — an unusual pairing of consumer product scale with advanced sensor integration.
• CAPID
  Marked Cartamundi's deliberate step beyond its core games market into generalised capacitive identification tokens, signalling a strategic technology pivot with broader industrial relevance.