An agriculture chemical company has developed a tool to protect its crop protection products in China from being counterfeited.
BASF China marketing manager Mark Shillingford tells Brownfield the technology is part of the product label with the appearance of being only a line drawn by a colored marking pen.
“When you take that package out of the retailer shop and you expose it to sunlight, the product brand, in Chinese characters, emerges where that box is when it’s exposed to sunlight,” Shillingford said. “When you take it back into the retailer shop it gently fades away and goes back to just being a bare color strip.”
Fake merchandise in China usually involves hand bags, watches or sneakers, but Shillingford says counterfeiting is common in crop protection products.
“We estimated in between 10 percent and 20 percent of what the market potential and market value is and can be,” said Schillingford. “The reality is it’s very hard to try to get your arms around it because it is quite prevalent in the marketplace.”
Currently the anti-counterfeiting labels are on BASF fungicides, but Shillingford says next year they’ll be on more products with updated technology to stay ahead of counterfeiters.
“It’s a significant cost,” he said, “but we know that there’s value in it for the customers and it’s something that we take seriously and we will continue to innovate.”
The new labels were introduced in March and Shillingford says it’s still too early to determine how successful the technology is.
Source: www.brownfieldagnews.com