Tasmania’s Old Kempton Distillery (OKD) has implemented HID Global’s Internet of Things (IoT) enablement platform to prevent counterfeiting of its major whiskeys, gins and other liquor products.

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Image: Tap phone to tag on luxury item. Photo: courtesy of Business Wire.

HID Trusted Tag Services, the IoT enablement platform, in combination with the web application developed by local integrator AusNFC, allows Old Kempton Distillery to protect its brands from grey market activities.

The IoT enablement platform also enables customers to authenticate their product at the point of sale.

The platform is said to strengthen the appellation registration for the Australian island state of Tasmania, which includes some of the most pristine water and climate conditions for the production of premium and top-shelf liquor products.

Old Kempton Distillery brand ambassador and business manager Robbie Gilligan said: “Old Kempton Distillery makes one of the world’s finest whiskeys, and with counterfeiting in our industry becoming a global issue, we recognized the need to take proactive steps to protect our brand.

“We were seeking the best brand protection technology available and a solution that would also allow us to securely engage with our customers, long after a sale.”

HID’s IoT platform also allows the distillery to connect with customers through direct and hyper-personalized communications, helping to develop brand loyalty in a privacy-preserving and closed environment.

The distillery’s solution integrates the IoT enablement platform into the AusNFC web application to offer front-end mobile experience on customers’ phones.

Every liquor bottle’s label is embedded with an HID cryptographically secure Near Field Communication (NFC) tag for connecting to the HID’s cloud authentication service.

Through tapping their iPhone or Android phone to the bottle, the customer can activate a secure communications channel to authenticate the provenance of their premium product, down to the actual bottle number.

Each tap will create a unique URL to prevent counterfeiters from copying, spoofing or manipulating the URL for false verification.

HID Global business development and strategic innovation director Mark Robinton said: “HID’s IoT technology is enabling mass adoption of brand protection by major brands worldwide that are seeking to address more sophisticated attempts by fraudsters focused on imitating their products.”