“Fake alcohol” or “Counterfeit alcohol,” search any of the two keywords, and your browser will be swamped with the news and information about counterfeit alcohol. Each day, people are accidentally consuming fake liquor and endangering their very existence. This problem has become so widespread that many people have lost their lives after ingesting spurious alcohol. In fact, fake alcohol has become a deadly problem for tourists traveling abroad.
As per The European Union (EU) Intellectual Property Office, €2.8 billion is lost in sales every year due to fraudulent wines and spirits in the EU.
Counterfeiting is at an alarming level in many industries, including pharmaceuticals, fashion clothing, shoes, bags, and other accessories. But it becomes a heinous crime when fake products endanger the lives of its consumers.
Why counterfeiting in Wine & Spirits is at its peak?
The reason is – Wine & Spirits industry is booming. The trend of consuming alcohol has become the norm. So the counterfeiters see a significant profit in this industry.
The problem is that the counterfeiters have become so expert in copying the taste, the packaging, and color that it becomes extremely difficult to differentiate the fake from the genuine.
Fake alcohol is dangerous
These days, counterfeiters are able to imitate the taste and color of many genuine brands in such a way that even regular consumers fail to realize that their drink is illegitimate. They use various dangerous chemicals in fake alcohol while trying to copy the color, taste, and aroma of the original product. Counterfeit alcohol often contains toxic substances such as embalming fluid, methanol, cleaning fluids, nail polish remover, automobile screen wash, and isopropanol, which are used in antifreeze and some fuels.
In February 2018, Mexican police raided two illegal distilleries and seized close to 20,000 gallons of black market ‘Tequila’, over 200 gallons of which has subsequently tested positive for dangerously high levels of methanol.
Toxic substances used in producing fake spirits many times prove to be lethal and may cause symptoms such as dizziness, vomiting, diarrhea, blindness, and even death.
How you can avoid buying fake alcohol
Even though it may be difficult to identify counterfeit alcohol, as many times, counterfeiters acquire empty packaging of legitimate brands and fill it with fake alcohol.
Still, before buying, you should carefully check the product packaging quality, spelling mistakes, label print quality, label glue quality, tampered packaging to identify a possible fake product. These checks are still not sure-shot ways to identify fake products. Brands must protect their customers by deploying a foolproof anti-counterfeiting solution to prevent the counterfeiting of their products.
Digital Anti-Counterfeiting solution to prevent counterfeiting
NeuroTags provides digital Anti-Counterfeiting solution to prevent the counterfeiting efficiently. Apart from preventing fakes, the solution also helps brands in increasing customer retention and effective consumer marketing in the retail market.
How it works
NeuroTags works on dual-code technology and provides AI-backed, mathematically coupled NeuroTags codes to be affixed to the brand’s product packaging. These codes can be in the form of QR, NFC, or RFID and provide every product item a unique, secure, and traceable identity.
NeuroTags code Sample
The codes are monitored and protected by algorithms and AI on the server in such a way that, if a counterfeiter tries to replicate the codes, the anomaly detection algorithm catches it and the products with copied codes get invalidated. This takes away the business incentive from counterfeiters. NeuroTags solution does not require the buyers to install any app, so the overall customer engagement is very high.
A pair of tightly coupled codes, one pair for each product
Customers can scan the open code to check product authenticity before buying alcohol. They can scratch/open and scan the protected code after the purchase. Once a protected code is scanned, it is marked as sold.
Brands get an excellent opportunity to engage their customers when they scan the protected code, as this code is scanned by a genuine buyer. With the right marketing strategy in place, brands can convert one-time customers into returning customers.
Please contact us to know more about the NeuroTags Anti-Counterfeiting solution.
