Product counterfeiting in agriculture: Swiss startup helps avoid losses in the billions

Authena, a Swiss startup based in Zug, fights counterfeiting, parallel imports and detour of e.g. pharmaceutical products worldwide. It is now a leading global provider of blockchain-based technology solutions for tracking supply chains and creating interactive end-to-end communication between manufacturers and end users. It uses so-called NFC transmitters, which act as an electronic seal. This allows manufacturers to guarantee the authenticity of their products and detect unauthorized interactions with their goods in real time.

Counterfeit products: A problem not only for consumer goods

Product counterfeiting is not only a problem for well-known brands of consumer goods - especially in the high-price segment. It is probably less well known that counterfeiting also affects the agricultural sector: "Worldwide, one in six products used on farms is counterfeit. In economic terms, the financial losses amount to as much as $10 billion," says Matteo Panzavolta, founder and CEO of Authena. Explaining how Authena's solution works, Panzavolta says, "Authena creates a digital copy individually for each product, which is stored in the blockchain and thus cannot be modified. Through end-to-end communication, manufacturers also get the opportunity to use their product as a communication tool and provide information via text, images, sound or video to end users. Our solution prevents fraud at all levels and makes a significant contribution to modern customer interaction."

Now Lonza Specialty Ingredients (LSI) has entered into a strategic partnership with Authena, in the area of crop protection products. For Andrew Thompson, Global Head of Crop Protection, LSI emphasizes that Authena has "what I consider to be the best anti-counterfeiting solution in the world."

Collaboration starts in Brazil

As a first step, Lonza Specialty Ingredients and Authena are focusing their collaboration on Brazil, where around one in four agricultural products is counterfeit. For this specific market, Andrew Thompson sees opportunities in various areas that will also be applied in other regions of the world: "In a first trial, we are equipping our products with interactive NFC tags. These allow our customers to check where the product comes from, how to use it, whether it has been opened or tampered with, where it is in the value chain and when it expires. At the same time, the data generated gives us a detailed listing of the complete inventory and the certainty that products are not on the shelf past their expiration date. On the one hand, this gives us planning security and, at the same time, the opportunity to communicate directly with our end customers and provide them with advice. In addition, Authena's technology gives us the opportunity to charge for products only when our customers actually use them. This enables us to introduce working capital reduction and optimization for our customers," says Andrew Thompson.

Rollout in Switzerland and Latin America

Matteo Panzavolta emphasizes: "The sum of our different service levels can be summarized as a holistic framework, in which case-specific and highly individual solutions can be bundled for the various demands of customers. Our goal is to revolutionize the way manufacturers protect their products, their reputation and, most importantly, their customers. That's why we are proud to work with Lonza Specialty Ingredients."

The partners intend to further expand their collaboration and develop the technology so that individual plants can be digitally connected directly to Lonza Specialty Ingredients. By automating processes, this will further improve response speed and reliability while increasing cost efficiency, they say. Following the trial in Brazil, Authena will develop customized applications for Lonza Specialty Ingredients throughout Latin America, Switzerland and other countries.

Source: Authena AG