The application of RFID technology in anti-counterfeiting tracking in the wine industry

The application of RFID technology in anti-counterfeiting tracking in the wine industry

South African wine giant KWV uses RFID technology to track the barrels in which wine is stored. Because the barrels are expensive and the quality of KWV’s wine is closely related to the year and number of barrels used for storage, KWV uses RFID systems provided by local RFID integrators to help track the location of barrels, the number of times they are used and when new barrels need to be ordered. When the new barrels are put into storage, KWV employees put an RFID tag on each new barrel, which records the basic information of the barrels, and then the employees use a handheld reader to read the ID number of each tag and send it directly to the company’s data monitoring system through the Wi-Fi connection, and the system’s barrel tracking software creates a record for each barrel. During the life cycle of a barrel, KWV employees can use the ID code to find each barrel and check the use of the barrel (usage time, location and usage status, as well as the background information of the barrel, such as the cooper manufacturer, etc.). It is possible to track the location of the barrel, the number of times it is used, and when a new barrel needs to be ordered.

For example, eProvenance in the United States adopts a double insurance approach, first, each wine bottle is marked with an RFID tag, which uses the 13.56MHz frequency band, embedded in hard plastic and placed on the bottom of the bottle, and the chip surface of the tag is printed with a unique ID code unique to the wine. This code corresponds to all the information about the wine in the data center, which the wine company can access through a web browser. This is a good way to identify whether a bottle is counterfeit. Second, eProvenance has a counterfeit-proof seal at the neck of each bottle. The bottle seal is a patented anti-counterfeiting design, with patented invisible anti-counterfeiting ink, through a simple handheld reader supplied with the package by the wine producer, with the reader can read the ink text, consumers can simply and intuitively and accurately judge the authenticity of the bottle, as well as determine the sealing of the bottle, whether it has been opened without authorization.

Another example is RFID red wine cork tag, this electronic tag belongs to a specific tag, according to the design of red wine bottle cap, specially used for bottled red wine traceability, anti-counterfeiting screening. Product features: specially customized for bottled red wine, is a disposable product, light and dexterous, simple to use. The phone scans the NFC tag fixed to the cork, and the information of the bottle of red wine will be displayed.

From the above cases, we can learn some practices: at present, many wine companies in order to seize the high-end customer market, invest a high cost to launch hardcover versions of products, whether it is the bottle itself or the outer packaging, is a big expense for enterprises. If it can successfully learn from KWV’s barrel tracking practice, enterprises also put RFID tags on the outer packaging and wine bottles of such high-end products, and establish corresponding data centers to track their whereabouts, and formulate a standardized enterprise self-recycling system to recycle and reuse such outer packaging and wine bottles, which can not only save expensive new bottle manufacturing costs for enterprises, but also effectively combat counterfeiters’ behavior of recycling empty bottles of high-end products for counterfeiting, which is also an effective product anti-counterfeiting management in a certain sense. Especially in the situation that RFID tag technology is becoming more mature and the cost is getting lower and lower, the input-output ratio of applying this technology to prevent counterfeiting on goods to reduce enterprise losses is considerable.

eProvenance’s approach is typical of anti-counterfeiting management in the alcohol industry. The uniqueness of the application of RFID tags records the information of wine bottles, which does a good job of anti-counterfeiting tracking and avoids counterfeiters imitating wine bottles for counterfeiting for profit; At the same time, by using a handheld reader to identify the bottleneck hidden printing ink, the counterfeiter will not replace the wine in the bottle with bad wine.

                                                    (Source: Shehzhen Seabreeze Smart Card Co.,Ltd.)

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