De La Rue Authentication on Track to Exceed £100 Million in Revenue

De La Rue has announced that its Authentication division is on track to exceed £100 million in revenue for fiscal year 2024, demonstrating good growth versus 2023 results.

The Authentication division provides physical and digital solutions to governments and commercial organisations for protecting revenues and brand reputations. The division also manufactures ID security components.

This healthy growth is, in large part, attributed to the company’s Government Revenue Solutions (GRS) coming into operation in Bahrain, Qatar and Oman. With these latest schemes on board, De La Rue now runs GRS programmes across five of the six countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) area – with the two other countries being United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. The sixth GCC country, Kuwait, is yet to implement any scheme at all for protecting government revenues.

The schemes use a combination of physical tax stamps and directly printed pack codes on tobacco products, which enable compliance with the traceability requirements of the World Health Organisation’s FCTC Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products.

Going forward, the immediate focus for GRS is to expand its offering in territories where De La Rue already has arrangements in place, to cover other excisable goods, with e-cigarettes, sweetened juices, mobile phones and beauty products all being discussed as additional product types. Three GCC countries have already committed to covering soft drinks. In addition, De La Rue has recently secured multi-year GRS contract renewals with countries across Europe and Africa.

With regard to tobacco products, the World Health Organisation has been pushing parties to the FCTC Protocol for compliance by the promised dates. Linked to this action, De La Rue’s level of pre-sales activity is increasing: it is in direct conversation with multiple countries in Africa and the Middle East, who have expressed an intention to tender for tax stamp and traceability solutions within the next 18 months. According to De La Rue, its win rate for tenders in this space since 2020 is over 50%.

On 4 October 2023, at the Tax Stamp & Traceability Forum™ in Tbilisi, Georgia, Andrew Gilbert, GRS Global Sales Director at De La Rue, will present insights and learnings from the implementation and operation of tax stamp and traceability solutions in the GCC, with particular emphasis on providing advice for tax and customs authorities considering how best to introduce a scheme for their country.