Digital labelling and blockchain technology to protect the wine industry

Trackyfood, the Food Traceability 4.0 platform developed to enhance the value of agri-food supply chains and a brand of Trackysat, has developed a digital label integrated with blockchain technology to protect the wine industry from fraud.

The new tool has a set of dedicated functions for handling supply chain information. Following a geolocalised census of vineyards and their organoleptic properties, all the various steps and processes are traced (harvest date, fermentation, ageing, barrelling, blending, etc.), after which they are recorded and dated to identify the products in each batch.

The interactive label will enable consumers to access all data including the exact location of the vineyards where the grapes were harvested.

“We firmly believe that digitalisation is the best way to combat counterfeiting,” explains Federico Persico, Chief Technology Officer at Trackyfood. “Italy is currently the only country in the world to have introduced a computerised wine register capable of monitoring supply chain operators following online registration of the movements and processing of wine products.”

The measure was considered particularly urgent following the recent fraud case involving the seizure of 10,550 hectolitres of must and wine worth €1 million from wineries in the provinces of Foggia and Bari by the Central Inspectorate of Quality Protection and Fraud Repression for Food and Agriculture Products (ICQRF).

According to EUIPO data, the wine industry is one of the sectors most affected by counterfeiting, with €356 million in lost sales up to the second quarter of 2019. It is clearly important to use digital labelling and blockchain technology to maintain strict control over the supply chain.

TrackyFood also has other new ideas in the pipeline, including the development of a device that will allow for digital dialogue using machinery equipped with 4.0 sensors.

“The aim is to automatically integrate the information generated by the bottling machines (date, number of bottles, batch, etc.) with the traceability information. This will make the process even faster and more secure and further reduce the risk of counterfeiting,” concludes Persico.