Product authentication and consumer engagement solutions provider YPB Group (which is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange) has signed a master service agreement (MSA) with a new channel partner, Specific Products, in Thailand, in order to access the high-volume tobacco and tax stamp industries in that country, according to reports in various financial media.

Ashton Potter, a leading provider of high security printing and forensic traceability technology for the private and public sector, and BostonCIO, a professional services information technology consulting firm, have announced a partnership to integrate their ProLinc® and BostonCOMPLY Practical Compliance Automation™ SaaS solutions.

In the July issue of Tax Stamp & Traceability News™ (TSTN), we referred to a news article in The Kathmandu Post, claiming that Perum Peruri, which had been selected in March to supply tobacco and alcohol tax stamps to Nepal’s Inland Revenue Department (IRD), had failed to show up for the signing of the contract for the stamps, and that the IRD had subsequently initiated legal action against the company.

At the end of June, the Authentication Solution Providers’ Association (ASPA) and GS1 India joined forces to, as they describe, take the fight against counterfeiting to the next level in India, with the use of global standards.

Domino Printing Sciences, a producer of coding, marking and printing technologies, has acquired Lake Image Systems, a producer of automated, inline, vision-based inspection systems.

The Indonesian company Perum Peruri, which was selected in March to supply tobacco and alcohol tax stamps to Nepal’s Inland Revenue Department (IRD), has failed to show up for the signing of the contract for the stamps, reports The Kathmandu Post. This situation is made all the more strange considering Perum Peruri’s longstanding relationship with the department.

SICPA has been awarded a new 10-year contract to implement its SICPA Excise Tax System (SETS), which will provide a secure, online platform for the payment, collection, and tracking of Oregon’s alcohol privilege taxes (also known as excise taxes).

In the year following the US state of Michigan’s introduction of a new tobacco excise tax stamp in 2014, tax revenues increased by $15.7 million – when they had in fact been predicted to decline – and exceeded the forecast for the year by nearly $30 million. Furthermore, it took only one year to recoup the costs of introducing this new stamp. Similarly, in Mozambique, alcohol and tobacco excise tax revenues increased by 85% in the first year after the introduction of a new stamp in 2017.

During a Kazakh-Swiss roundtable business forum, held on 22 November in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan (and part of the official visit of Swiss President Ueli Maurer to the country), a cooperation agreement was signed between the Swiss company SICPA SA and Transtelecom JSC – one of the leading information and telecom service providers in Kazakhstan.

If you ask an astronomer what a ‘quasar’ is, they’ll tell you it’s an extremely bright celestial object emitting an immense amount of energy in the form of, say, light or infrared radiation, from a compact source. Recently, SICPA launched its own ‘brightest star’ – QUAZAR® – which it describes as an optical security technology offering vibrant colours and engaging visible effects that are quick and easy for end users to authenticate, without the need for prior training.