Over the last few years, sustainability has moved up the corporate agenda, from a ‘nice to have’ to a ‘must have’ for shareholders, investors and customers. There is, and will continue to be a growing need for printing, labelling, track and trace and packaging companies to step up to the mark on sustainability.

Koenig & Bauer Banknote Solutions has launched ValiCash™, an app that not only identifies high security documents, but authenticates them too, giving either a ‘Pass’ or a ‘Fail’ response almost instantaneously.

A business unit of fashion group LVMH has partnered with brand protection specialist Security Matters on a series of pilot projects to improve traceability of raw materials in the luxury goods supply chain.

A review of this year's headlines.

Digital watermarking specialist Digimarc has entered into an agreement to acquire EVRYTHNG, developers of the Product Cloud platform which links every product item to its Active Digital Identity™ on the web and joins-up product data across the value chain for visibility, validation, real time intelligence, and connection with people.

Jura Security Printing recently held a series of practical workshops in Budapest, Hungary to discuss the future of security printing. This was one of the first events in the last 20 months or so that customers and suppliers had physically travelled to in order to meet up in person, so it was filled with plenty of energy and enthusiasm.

Many technologies and features with their roots in commercial printing have made, and continue to make, a substantial contribution to secure document production. However, these technologies have for the most part been concerned with producing visual colours, perceived by the unaided eye as conventional colour printing.

Infrared (IR) is part of the electromagnetic spectrum that lies immediately beyond red light and is therefore invisible to the naked eye. Because of this, IR inks are widely used to create covert features that are both highly secure and machine readable.

In July, Russia’s new National Product Traceability System (NPTS) transitioned from being experimental and voluntary, to a mandatory scheme for businesses dealing in certain types of products. The new scheme was implemented alongside the already existing Chestny ZNAK (‘honest mark’) product traceability system, introduced in 2019. However, the two systems are completely independent, noninterchangeable, and noticeably different in terms of operating principles and scope.

Canadian company Nanotech has been causing quite a stir in recent months with a succession of successful authentication programmes using its toolkit of nano-optic based visual effects. The Holography Conference Online 2021 (THCO 17 – 18 November) provided the perfect opportunity for Neal Skura, Director of Product Management to open the toolkit and take a look inside.

‘I Am Inevitable’! So said a purple hued titan in a universe many of us love so much. Thanos had the benefit of the ‘Infinity Stones’, but needed a gauntlet to draw their combined power together. The brand protection industry has a similar story. There are powerful Infinity Stone approaches to choose from, but each in isolation has a limited impact.

Lately, we’ve been hearing of a growing number of companies that are offering, or expanding on their market surveillance and product intelligence services as a way of helping enforcement officials and brand owners to quickly identify illicit trade activity in particular markets, and to act upon these activities before it is too late.

The Holography Conference Online (THCO 17-18 November) has become an important calendar event for hologram suppliers, producers and users to meet and exchange information about the use of holograms as an authentication technology.

Reconnaissance is delighted to announce that the Tax Stamp & Traceability Forum™ will be returning next year and that the tax stamp community will be able to gather together once again, in person, after what seems like a very long time.

De La Rue has announced a major investment to expand its existing facilities in Malta, in order to create a 29,000m2 manufacturing site. The expansion will double De La Rue Authentication’s manufacturing capacity for tax stamps and brand protection labels, and provide a more flexible, agile and environmentally- friendly manufacturing footprint for its Currency division.