Counterfeit products pose a significant threat to various sectors, including documents, pharmaceuticals, food, luxury goods, and art, causing economic losses and security risks. It is estimated that this hidden market is worth between €400 billion and over €2 trillion, with direct and indirect repercussions in Europe estimated at over €80 billion. Although many technological solutions have been tested over the years, it is still a challenge to effectively protect personal identity or products by making them uniquely identifiable, secure and inexpensive at the same time. Existing solutions range from RFID tags and secure QR codes to special inks and blockchain for traceability. However, many technologies suffer from vulnerabilities to cloning or high costs.
In this context, Keeper focuses on developing an innovative system that combines security, anti-counterfeiting and traceability, exploiting the optical peculiarities of a class of nanomaterials and the evolution of advanced spectroscopic techniques to create a comprehensive solution capable of addressing market challenges.
The Consortium's objectives are to develop new inks based on active nanomaterials, create appropriate coding, develop a dedicated low-cost reader and a software platform, in order to create a complete prototype. This will then be tested and validated on an industrial production line of ID badges, to test its scalability and better model its advantages and costs. Once complete, the system will guarantee the security and traceability of European and other physical products in various sectors, and will also be able to support and guarantee the identity of profiles and documents (both public and private) while minimizing the impact in terms of security, selective access to information, visibility, usability, and costs.
