De La Rue Extends Contracts in Nine Countries

De La Rue has announced the multi-year extension of tax stamp/security seal contracts across nine countries in Europe and Africa.

The contracts support the overall strategy of De La Rue’s Government Revenue Solutions (GRS) business, enabling governments and commercial entities to protect their revenue streams against counterfeit goods and illicit trade.

The contracts include a two-year extension signed in Cameroon for the supply of a digital tax stamp solution for tobacco products, wine and spirits. The solution is supported by De La Rue’s stamp management and traceability software platform, DLR Certify™.

The extension builds on a successful partnership with the government of Cameroon which saw its tax revenues increase by 100% over a three-year period, following the introduction of the solution more than ten years ago.

The government of Sudan has also recently extended its track and trace GRS contract with De La Rue for a further ten years. The solution, which was first introduced in 2014, consists of physical tax stamps with embedded unique codes. Using the DLR Certify platform, the solution enables data analytics to be generated on each pack of cigarettes as it makes its way through the supply chain.

Like Cameroon, the contract extension in Sudan reflects the significant success of the existing scheme in enabling the government to increase its revenue collection.

Industry organisations across the European Union have also recently extended multiple contracts with De La Rue to provide security seals across seven European markets. The seals enable the organisations to meet their obligations under the EU Tobacco Products Directive (TPD), which calls for every tobacco pack to carry five security features, at least one of which must be overt, one semi-covert and one covert.

While the 22 member states that were already using tax stamps before the TPD entered into force (in 2019) extended the role of their stamps to cover the security feature requirements of the TPD, the countries that weren’t using tax stamps (Austria, Cyprus, France, Finland, Sweden, and UK) chose to go with non-fiscal labels as the security feature.

The labels are purchased directly from De La Rue by individual industry organisations, in accordance with an agreed national design and security specifications.

The continuation of these existing contracts has allowed De La Rue to manufacture and ship over four billion security labels for European markets during the past financial year.

Dave Sharratt, Managing Director of the Authentication Division said ‘I’d like to thank the government of Sudan, the government of Cameroon and our industry partners in the EU for their continued trust and business with De La Rue. Renewals of long-standing contracts demonstrate the ongoing value that our solutions are delivering to our customers whilst also supporting the long-term and sustainable growth of De La Rue’s Authentication Division’.