News in Brief

Kappahl Strengthens Sustainability Credentials

Nordic fashion group Kappahl has turned to Sweden’s TrusTrace, specialists in supply chain traceability for global fashion and apparel brands, to help it strengthen its sustainability credentials.

According to Kappahl, the use of the TrusTrace platform will help it adhere to regulations including the Norwegian Transparency Act and the upcoming EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles, and enrich the data it can use to incorporate sustainability in its day-to- day operations.

TrusTrace is a software platform that consolidates fragmented supply chain and material compliance data, digitises supplier assessments and audits, providing value chain management and full supply chain visibility,

Kappahl says it will equip the company with tools for efficiently managing sustainability data for the 40 million or so garments it sells annually, making it possible to show where and how the garments are produced, thanks to stored sustainability data on fibre production, yarns, where the fabric was woven, printed, dyed and, ultimately, sewn into garments. The results can then be compiled to provide a complete picture of the garment’s values. The tool also enables the information to be communicated to customers in an easy and accessible way.

The tracking and measurement of garment data will be progressively introduced, with the objective of making information about all stages of the production process for all Kappahl garments accessible to customers by 2025.

Circularise Raises Fund for Blockchain Platform

Dutch supply chain traceability startup Circularise has raised €11 million to help fund further development of its blockchain- powered platform in a first-round financing.

Circularise specialises in ‘digital passports’ that can be used to provide visibility in complex supply chains, such as chemicals, plastics, metals, and critical raw materials, automotive, electronics, packaging and construction.

Various information on raw materials, recycling history, biomass and recycling content, carbon footprint, third-party certification etc. can be traced through the supply chain.

The company recently launched MassBalancer, a tool for mass balance bookkeeping – a chain of custody approach that allows tracking the net amount of sustainable materials as they move through a system or supply chain – in order to support the shift from fossil feedstocks to sustainable alternatives in the plastic and chemicals industry.

‘There is an urgent need for new scalable, end-to-end digital solutions to trace renewable and recycled material flows, providing increased transparency along the value chains,’ commented Lars Peter Lindfors, Head of Innovation at sustainable fuel company Neste, one of the investors.

‘Circularise provides novel solutions for this need, and we are excited to support them in speeding up the critical transition to circular solutions’.

VerifyMe Extends Taggant Partnership with HP Indigo

Brand protection and supply chain security specialist VerifyMe has announced the renewal of its exclusive ink taggant partnership with HP Indigo for a further five years.

The agreement covers the provision of VerifyInk™ security ink taggants for HP Indigo’s 6000 series of digital press models, which HP markets as HP Security Electroink.

Under the terms of the new agreement, the scope of cooperation has increased so that, in addition to Verify IR ink, HP indigo will refer customers to additional VerifyMe technologies such as consumer engagement codes, and new brand protection technologies. It will also consider adding other HP Indigo press models supporting the Security Electroink on an as-needed basis.

Entrupy Publishes State of the Fake Report

New York-based brand protection specialist Entrupy says that despite a doubling in the number of authentications of products using its platform last year over 2020, the number of suspect or counterfeit results has stayed the same – at around 8%.

The data – published in its ‘State of the Fake’ report – is drawn from 23 million product images taken using Entrupy’s vision-based authentication platform. This converts microscopic surface features of an item into a digital fingerprint which is stored on a database that can be interrogated using artificial intelligence to verify a product is genuine.

For sneakers – one of Entrupy’s core product categories – the rate of items that could not be confirmed as authentic was 16%. Another core product category is luxury goods. The brand with the highest level of suspect products last year was Goyard – at 21.4% – followed by Dior, Prada, Gucci and Fendi.

Other findings in the report were that the proportion of products that could not be verified as authentic sold through consumer-to-consumer (C2C) marketplaces fell from 10.8% in 2019 to 5.5%, which Entrupy attributes to greater effort by the platforms to introduce processes and technologies that try to prevent fake listings.

Higher than average unidentified rates were found in Italy (21%), Philippines (20%) and Vietnam (15%), which the report suggests is linked to Italy’s position as a hub for fashion brands, and the latter two countries’ proximity to counterfeit production centres in China.

India’s Drug Makers Urge Portal for Codes

Indian drug manufacturers have urged the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare to put in place a central portal to store QR codes printed on the label of top 300 brands of medicines batch wise to avoid duplication of the codes, thereby curbing the circulation of counterfeit or substandard drugs.

The drug makers’ appeal came after the health ministry issued a draft Rule introducing amendments to the Drugs Rules, 1945 making QR codes mandatory on the packaging of 300 life-saving drugs from May 2023 to prevent the sale of counterfeit drugs. The draft Rule issued this June 2022 mandated manufacturers to print or affix barcodes or QR codes on primary packaging labels or, in the case of inadequate space, on the secondary package label that stores data or information legible with software to facilitate authentication.

The stored data needs to include information such as unique product identification code, proper and generic name of the drug, brand name, name and address of the manufacturer, batch number, date of manufacturing and date of expiry along with the manufacturing license number.

The government should introduce a central portal where manufacturers can upload the printed codes batch wise so that, if there are issues with counterfeits, the manufacturers can be absolved of the necessity to confirm that the counterfeit drug is not manufactured by them, said the industry body.