The following article originally appeared in the October 2010 issue of Brand Protection & Promotion World:

Holograms with Covert Taggants net 30% Tax Revenue Increase -The Ukrainian government has revealed it has recovered $200 million (e149.9 million) tax revenue on alcohol and tobacco, hitherto lost to counterfeiting since the introduction of holograms with machine- readable taggants in 2008. The Ukrainian EDAPS Consortium produces the hologram and tax stamps, while Inksure, a US-headquartered security solutions provider, supplies the taggants.

Inksure CEO and president Tal Gilat refers to the verification of the authenticity of tax stamps as ‘a cat and mouse game between security experts and sophisticated networks of criminals,’ requiring increasingly complex technologies to protect against counterfeiting.

Inksure adds a chemical compound that emits a unique spectral signature per implementation during standard printing production. While invisible to the naked eye, Inksure’s pen-sized, hand-held readers – PocketSure and SignaSure – can instantly identify these spectral signatures and verify the authenticity of the product with forensic accuracy.

‘By adding machine-readable taggants to the holograms we provide immediate, forensic-level authentication. There is no need for subjective evaluation of the hologram by the inspector to determine if it is real or a fake. Once an inspector identifies a fake hologram in the field he can immediately alert the police, and there is no need for lab analysis, which takes a lot of time and effort,’ explains Gilat.

The Secretary General of the World Customs Organisation has singled out for praise the Ukrainian tax stamp project, while the Tobacco Atlas confirms the Ukraine has one of the lowest percentages of illicit cigarettes consumed, despite having porous borders.

Around 1,300 readers were supplied to the Ukrainian tax inspectors and Gilat says the tagged holograms protect over 1 billion tobacco and spirits items per year in the Ukraine.

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