Toppan Printing Co., Ltd.’s (hereafter Toppan Printing; head office: Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo; President & Representative Director: Shingo Kaneko) Cachet-Tag™—an NFC1 tag designed to ensure that removal breaks the antenna circuit and makes reading impossible— has been selected for use on all Grand Cru wines produced by Domaine Ponsot, a high-end wine producer based in Burgundy, France. Shipments of products using Cachet-Tag commenced in October 2018.

If the Cachet-Tag is removed from the wine bottle, the NFC tag breaks and the data on it can no longer be read. This can prevent relabeling and other types of fraud and is an effective measure against counterfeit and imitation products.

When scanned with an NFC-enabled smartphone, the data stored on the IC chip can be read by a dedicated app provided by Selinko SA (head office: Belgium; CEO：Patrick Eischen), a company expert in authentication, gray market detection, and marketing services for connected objects.

The result of authentication is then displayed on the smartphone screen to enable easy verification. The technology can also be used as a tool to provide consumers with product-related and other information.

Domaine Ponsot is a Burgundy-based producer of high-end wines. Due to the rarity and excellent reputation of its wines, Domaine Ponsot has led the high-end wine market in introducing advanced counterfeit prevention technologies in response to damage to its brand caused by counterfeit products for more than 20 years. 

Features of Cachet-Tag

・Prevention of fraud with brittle processing

　Cachet-Tag features a layer that has undergone special processing to make it brittle. When the label is removed, the antenna circuit and NFC tag are broken, preventing fraudulent relabeling and reuse.

・IC authentication based on generation of a unique code each time the tag is read

　Cachet-Tag uses NTAG 413 DNA, an innovative, high-security IC chip with a cryptographic authentication function produced by NXP Semiconductors. When the NFC tag is read, both ID information and unique authentication code information are acquired. High-level security is ensured as authentication information differs for each individual product and each NFC phone tap, whereby the result of the generation of the unique code is assessed in the cloud.

・NFC tag authentication can be performed with a smartphone (Google Android / Apple iOS)

　Products can be authenticated and information acquired without a dedicated reading device because the result of authentication can be displayed on screen after simply reading with a consumer’s NFC-enabled smartphone.