IFA Celtics is First Mexican Pharma Company to Adopt NFC

IFA Celtics, a leading Mexican pharmaceutical manufacturer, has partnered with ForgeStop, a connected-product technology company, to launch NFC-enabled smart packaging. The packaging will allow patients, pharmacists, and regulators to instantly authenticate IFA Celtics medicines by smartphone, with no special app required.

The collaboration makes IFA Celtics the first pharmaceutical company in Mexico to adopt near-field communication (NFC) for drug authentication, and among the first globally to deploy the technology on a commercial scale.

Using ForgeStop’s platform, NFC labels with unique identifiers (UIDs) will be applied to IFA Celtics drug packs during the production process, upon which the labels are activated and linked to relevant batch and lot numbers, as well as to product metadata relating to origin, sustainability, compliance, etc. At this point, the system also writes an encryption key into the label that is linked to the UID.

When scanned with an NFC-enabled smartphone – now standard in over 90% of global devices – the label connects directly to an advanced app hosted on the brand’s own secure domain. Each scan generates a one-time, cryptographically unique response, preventing tag reuse.