Haelixa and Italy’s leading fashion retailer OVS have renewed their cotton traceability partnership for a second year. Using Haelixa’s DNA marker technology, cotton grown in Italy is marked at the gin, close to the farm.

Scientists at the John de Laeter Centre, Curtin University, Australia, have developed a technique for ‘fingerprinting’ lithium, a key ingredient in energy storage systems and rechargeable batteries for electric vehicles.

Traceability is far from a new concept. In the 1930s, it certified the origin of premium goods like French champagne. Today, it is more relevant than ever.

In a blow to India's pharmaceutical export ambitions, implementation of the country’s planned track and trace (T&T) system has hit another roadblock, with the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) announcing a one-year extension that pushes the deadline to February 2025. This delay follows a previous setback in August 2023.

The system, proposed in 2011 and aimed at combating counterfeit drugs and improving transparency in drug exports and pharmaceutical supply chain, has been meeting repeated challenges stemming from difficulties within the industry and representation from the industry leaders. Technical obstacles and concerns regarding system readiness have contributed to this hurdle.

Science and technology group Merck and micro-transponder producer p-Chip Corp have formed an alliance to use p-Chip’s technology as a crypto-anchor (unique identifier) for creating digital twins of physical products, allowing them to be tracked and authenticated through the supply chain.

In the February issue of Authentication & Brand News™, we asked whether EU digital product passports (DPPs) could double as anti-counterfeiting devices, in addition to their primary role of gathering information about a product and its supply chain in order to support the transition to a circular economy.

As the world’s largest sporting goods retailer – in addition to manufacturing its own sports products – Decathlon has revolutionised its operations over the past 10 years by implementing radio frequency identification (RFID) technology on every piece of merchandise in its vast inventory.

In August, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced a one-year delay in enforcing the Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA) electronic tracking rules until November 2024, in order to provide a 12-month stabilisation period to aid compliance.

A number of key themes emerged from the presentations, panel discussion, and workshops at the recent Tax Stamp & Traceability Forum™ (TSTF) held in October, in Tbilisi, Georgia.