It’s not all about new constitutions, riots and uncontrollable forest fires lately in Chile. There’s actually been some interesting news with respect to traceability, with press releases from both the tax authority, Servicio de Impuestos Internos (SII), and the national customs service, Aduanas de Chile.

A team from the Institute of Forensic Science and Criminology at Panjab University, India, claims to have conducted the first study of its kind to analyse cigarette filters using ATR-FTIR spectroscopy in combination with statistical models.

Romanian authorities are investigating China Tobacco’s main factory in Europe, outside Bucharest, in connection with the possible smuggling of large quantities of cigarettes, reports OCCRP.org.

The South African case study on dealing with illicit tobacco continues to be an interesting one to follow.

SICPA has finalised the roll-out of its SICPATRACE® platform in the US state of Michigan, under a new five-year contract with the Department of Treasury.

Several large-scale seizures over the course of this year have shown that a concerning development, identified during Europol’s Serious and Criminal Organized Crime Assessment 2021 (SOCTA-21), has unfortunately not abated.

The National Bureau for Revenue (NBR) in Bahrain has launched its digital tax stamp and traceability system on cigarettes, following the signing of a contract with De La Rue in 2021.

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.

Eighteen months after lifting its cigarette ban, South Africa still struggles with inflated illicit sales, proving that the experts were right when they said the ban would entrench illicit trade into the day-to-day life of the country and make it very difficult to eradicate.

The Smoke Free Partnership, a European coalition of NGOs working to mobilise governments to make tobacco control a political priority, has raised concerns about the track and trace provisions of the EU Tobacco Products Directive.