Tobacco gets tracked from the package till the palette. Within the EU the Tobacco Products Directive (TBD) aims to improve processes of the market for tobacco and related products and at the same time tries to ensure health protection for EU citizens. As highly regulated industries, the pharma and tobacco industry, are dealing with many similar issues, i.e., the pack-coding – especially the code encryption to set-up a reasonable global track and trace system. There is no full aggregation in tobacco, as every single packet needs to be traceable, which is complicated and cost intensive but offers big plus points in the supply chain and code security. If a product arrives at point C instead of point B, that just don´t fit the picture. In tobacco the EU prescribes a data matrix code up to 50 characters, which then gets done and printed by the companies for every unit, thereby is hard to copy and makes, next to cigarettes and tobacco, also devices and bundles traceable. 

This presentation covers:

• Minute to minute traceability of products in a global track and trace system
• How to minimize the danger of counterfeits through pack-coding
• How regulations get met in the tobacco industry and what the learning curve looked like, i.e., in the set-up of new plants and production processes
• Availability of basis data after the set-up and how to avoid overproduction/waste management by data collection, also for your wholesaler
• How to get your security in by your track and trace system, data models and principles and save costs by avoiding counterfeits