Dentsu Tracking supports the European Union to fight illicit trade in tobacco products.
Dentsu Tracking, a brand of Dentsu Aegis Network, is collaborating with the European Commission and Member States of the European Union (EU) to design and operate a track and trace system as part of EU legislation on tobacco control (Tobacco Products Directive). .
The track and trace system supports EU Member States in the fight against illicit trade. It therefore plays an important role in protecting public health, state budgets and legal economic operators.
This industry-wide scope required an innovative platform and data analysis system capable of tracking more than 26 billion products per year across the EU.
“As far as we know, this is the world’s first solution giving 360 visibility of the supply-chain across an entire industry”, says Philippe Castella, Managing Director of Dentsu Tracking. “We are honoured to work with the European Commission and the EU Member States. It is a unique project allowing 28 Member States on one single platform to track domestic and transnational sales, as well as products exported outside of the EU. No other platform is connecting this volume and complexity of data”.
Dentsu Tracking was awarded the concession in December 2018 based on an innovative solution that provides public authorities with visibility of the total supply-chain from manufacturing to retail. It also ensures that the track and trace system is under full control of public authorities, including access to the collected data, as required by the Tobacco Products Directive and the WHO FCTC Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products.
As of May 20th, 2019, cigarettes and roll-your-own tobacco must be marked with a unique identifier code. All the involved economic operators are required to report all tobacco product movements and related financial information. This information is collected and stored in a central system, operated by Dentsu Tracking. The necessary reporting, queries, business analytics, and alerts are provided as part of the Dentsu Tracking solution. This allows Member States and the European Commission to monitor the movements of legal tobacco products (tracking) and to determine at which point a product was diverted into the illicit market, or vice versa (tracing). The analysis can also be used to highlight anomalies, to detect fraudulent activities, and to confirm if products are legitimate when passing inspection points.
All movements are tracked instantly for automated real-time traceability at any point along the supply-chain, and with all the information fed into one centralized database. This takes traceability to a new benchmark. In comparison, in pharmaceutical regulation there is a “check in–check out” approach tracking only a small portion of the supply chain. In food-industry regulation there is typically a “one up – one down” approach without any centralized repository, which means that the traceability and visibility of a product from start to end must be rebuilt manually.
Links
For further information on the EU regulatory framework to fight illicit trade in tobacco products, please refer to the European Commission official site here.
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