News in Brief

Ecuador Counters Seed Piracy

SICPA has announced a strategic partnership with the Ecuadorian Seed Association (Ecuasem) to combat seed piracy and counterfeiting in the country.

Seed piracy seriously affects producers and importers, as well as farmers, resulting in low yielding crops, soil contamination, proliferation of pests and large economic losses. Ecuasem estimates that least 30% of seeds in Ecuador have an illegal origin, with the problem mainly affecting mass consumption products such as rice and maize.

The agreement seeks to strengthen existing elements to fight against the problem through the application of technology that allows for rapid authentication of products, validation of their legal origin and protection of the integrity of the supply chain. The proposed solution combines physical and digital security, including visible, invisible and encrypted features allowing real-time verification through mobile applications.

SICPA’s solutions will be applied to the seeds’ packaging, allowing easy and intuitive at-a-glance verification of the product by any actor in the distribution chain and by farmers. In addition, a secure QR code will provide a digital identity to each product for real-time verification purposes through an app that not only validates the QR code but also allows access to important product information.

‘We opted for this alliance with SICPA because we want to generate a change in Ecuador’ said Ecuasem President Carlos Cadavid. ‘This is a very good tool to reach the farmer directly, highlighting the importance of using certified seed and how to verify that what they are buying is really what they want and need.’

True Pedigree Launches GenuScan

True Pedigree, an anti-counterfeiting technology company, has announced the launch of GenuScan, its new platform designed to let users determine the provenance, destination and legitimacy of goods by scanning them via a smartphone.

The secure, cloud-powered platform analyses products – either via its label, RFID technology or a Near Field Communication (NFC) tag – and determines whether or not it is genuine.

True Pedigree describes GenuScan as ‘an intuitive front-end technology- agnostic platform that leverages the wealth of printed or digital information on any product to determine its origin and authenticity.’ Data sets from disparate systems across the supply chain are identified and uploaded into the GenuScan Cloud platform on a regular basis. Smartphone devices, deployed globally, scan the product and the scan is instantly compared to the client’s supply chain data to authenticate the product and provide complete track and trace information.

Rounding off the solution, a web-based analytics dashboard serves as a repository and analyses all authentication data to provide Key Product Indicators (KPI’s) and metrics along with actionable intelligence.

According to True Pedigree, the solution is customisable to work for any user, the company reports, from retail employees to manufacturers, auditors or law-enforcement officials, enabling companies to take proactive steps to mitigate risk before illicit products can be deployed in the market.

‘Protecting IP is a cat-and-mouse game because counterfeiters and gray-market operators move quickly and are good at covering their tracks,’ said Shelley Raina, True Pedigree’s CEO. ‘Every product out there features multiple data points, including serial number, SKU, date or place of origin, and every step along a delivery pipeline provides specific information about a product. Most of this data goes untapped, but GenuScan uses this information to instantly verify any product’s legitimacy while providing invaluable analytics and KPIs through a customisable dashboard.’ 

De La Rue Terminates Agreement with Portals

De La Rue is terminating its ten year supply agreement with Portals Paper five years early, an agreement that formed part of a private equity-backed management buyout of the paper maker in 2018.

As a result, Portals is closing its banknote paper mill in Overton in the UK, marking the end of the independent commercial banknote paper manufacturer. The company will continue to produce non- banknote security paper, as well as security features including foils and threads through its acquisition last year of the security business of Fedrigoni.

De La Rue, which acquired the Portals paper business in 1995, decide to exit paper production in 2018 and focus instead on polymer. The company was sold to the Portals management, but with De La Rue agreeing to a minimum annual banknote paper substrate volumes agreement with a pre-agreed price mechanism for ten years. In addition, De La Rue was to be Portals’ preferred supplier for security features (which it retained under the agreement).

According to De La Rue, paper substrate, which represents one of its largest raw material costs, had been hit hard with the rising costs of energy. This, combined with a trend from paper to polymer, had left the company with minimum annual volume commitments of paper from Portals in excess of its market requirements, and consequently paying fines for the shortfall.

According to Portals, the termination of the agreement means that paper production at Overton is no longer viable. It will be winding down its operations in an orderly fashion, with as little disruption to existing customers as possible. This, it says, will allow it to fully focus going forward on the remaining, successful parts of the business – its remaining paper mill in the UK, and the security features business in Milan, Italy.

Both are unaffected by the announcement.

Detecting Fake Whisky

Researchers from the Central Police University in Taoyuan City, Taiwan have shown that levels of methanol may be used to distinguish adulterated and counterfeit scotch whisky from the genuine article.

Methanol is introduced when distilled ethanol (EtOH) is used to produce fake whisky, according to the scientists, whose analytical technique can detect methanol in samples down to 5 parts per million. If methanol is present outside a normal range, the product is likely to be adulterated or fake.

The researchers bought bottles of authentic single malt and blended whiskies and compared them with six adulterated samples seized by Taiwan police. Four of the six adulterated samples were out of range, but two fell within it, ‘necessitating more complementary data to confirm their authenticity,’ according to the scientists.

Authentic whiskies have a tiny amount of methanol that is create during the fermentation process and not completely removed during distillation. Producers have to meet strict level limits, as methanol can lead to blindness, nerve damage and even death if too much is consumed.

Measuring methanol could be a ‘preceding eliminative marker for the rapid authentication of… seized bottled Scotch whiskies in Taiwan,’ according to the researchers.

Taiwan is a big market for Scotch whisky – importing £226 million-worth in 2021 according to figures from the Scotch Whisky Association, making it the industry’s third-largest export market.