Issue Date: May 2010

Payne Security, a leading supplier of brand protection, document authentication and personal ID solutions, announces that its novel anti-counterfeiting solution has been selected by one of the ten largest wine producers in the US. This California winery selected Payne Security to protect its finest high-value wine range, retailing at over $150 a bottle. Payne Security’s proprietary taggant authentication solution is providing the wine producer with a safe, covert security system for reliable product verification and enables the detection of counterfeit products.

The wine industry is becoming increasingly aware of the growing counterfeit threat for high-value products.The most common methods of counterfeiting involve the reuse of genuine packaging, with refilling or relabeling common practice. Securing bottles with methods such as laser engraving fails to provide significant protection against counterfeiters as these can be re-filled and it also potentially makes it easier to sell as such bottles can successfully go through an authentication test.Authentication of the cork is also not a favoured option because government regulatory bodies often do not allow any sort of foreign material to be used on it as it comes in contact with the wine and could potentially affect its quality.

Payne Security takes an innovative approach to addressing the wine producer’s requirement for ultimate brand protection of its high-value products, working directly with brand owners to engineer a solution to address their specific problem. As with any product protection solution, maximum protection is achieved only if the portion of the product containing the authentication solution is destroyed or permanently altered upon use of the product.  One of the features of the Payne Security system is that unlike other technologies, it is not dependant on a response visible to the naked eye, therefore any change is incredibly difficult to detect and can only be verified with a Payne Security handheld reader. This allows brand owners to carry out random authentication checks throughout the distribution chain to facilitate quality assurance and provides dependable distinction of genuine products from counterfeit ones.

Richard Burhouse, Business Development Manager for Payne Security, explains: “The wine industry is under increasing pressure to protect its high-value products against counterfeiters. As our taggant authentication solution has been successfully used for many years around the world, across some of the most demanding industries, the wine industry can now take advantage of the advanced security capabilities of this innovative technology.”