For tobacco product manufacturers required to comply with the traceability provisions of the EU TPD, the placing of individual identifying codes on each pack, and then on each carton is a challenging additional step in the production process.

The term ‘biometrics’ is commonly used to describe technologies that employ human features that are unique to individuals – such as fingerprints or retinal eye patterns – as a way to identify those individuals. But the term is also employed, within the authentication industry, to describe technologies which use the intrinsic microscopic or molecular properties unique to items such as tax stamps to identify and thereby authenticate those items. Hence the term ‘document biometrics’, or ‘fingerprinting’.

The Portuguese Mint and Official Printing Office, INCM SA, in a presentation by Nuno Gonçalves at the recent Tax Stamp Forum™ in Budapest, described its new coding system, but unlike other such systems, this one, UNIQODE®, is artistically as well as technically innovative. (Patents are pending.)

Italian equipment manufacturer Graphi Mecc Group (GMG), based in Verona, has devoted many years since its founding in 1985 to devising the most fool-proof way to produce encoded unique serial numbers, ensuring that sequences are correct, no numbers are skipped or duplicated and the encoding in a variety of formats is accurate.