Matthews’ serialisation solution

Counterfeiting is a global issue and an increasing problem for exporters as those making fake goods try to cash in on Australia’s “clean, green” image. It’s a particular problem in the growing Asian market for high-end Australian produce — be it wine, infant formula, produce, pharmaceuticals or other therapeutic goods. On top of causing irreparable damage to a company’s bottom line, counterfeiting is a real health risk in the food and heath industries.

However, Matthews’ serialisation solution makes it more difficult — and less financially viable — for counterfeiters to enter the supply chain, simply because it’s difficult to duplicate valid codes. In this way, the solution helps minimise the risk to consumers and improves consumer safety. As well as being one of the most effective ways to improve traceability, it gives manufacturers and brand owners the data they need to respond quickly and effectively to risks in the supply chain.

Serialisation is the process of assigning and marking each product or product component with a unique identifier. Typically, this happens during the manufacturing process using specialised marking technologies — a core focus of Matthews’ technologies.

Aside from anti-counterfeiting, Matthews’ serialisation solution has several more benefits, including:

• Better transparency: your business’s serialisation code can be as deep and detailed as needed to give you and your trading partners the visibility you want
• Minimising recalls: enables timely recalls, returns, withdrawals and rebates, while simultaneously shrinking loss recovery
• Protecting your brand: enables manufacturers to detect and manage counterfeit product threats, protecting the integrity of real brands; faster recalls and withdrawals also protect your brand’s reputation
• Building consumer trust: build and enhance consumer trust through product verification or authentication
• Tracing returns: detect returns that were not originally sold to the customer

When all three units of packaging (that is, primary, secondary and tertiary) are all serialised and linked to each other, serialisation also offers the ability to control inventory and increase shipping accuracy by capturing the necessary information as a product moves through the supply chain to the consumer, allowing the manufacturer to see the exact item and quantities delivered at each point in the chain.

Matthews has the expertise and technologies to implement serialisation in your business, and will be exhibiting at foodpro 2017.

Check out Matthews’ resource library, with whitepapers, presentations to industry bodies, infographics for manufacturing, case studies, articles from our thought leaders, videos showing solutions in action and more.