Okay, hello everyone. Good morning, afternoon, evening to some, wherever you may be in the world. We're delighted to have you on our webinar today, highlighting the future of wine authentication and how the IoT and AI are redefining luxury brand protection. We have a great lineup of presenters for you today. We have Dr. Markus Ehrat, CEO of Genuine-Analytics; Dr. Maria Bikaki, Project Leader of winePROOF at Genuine-Analytics; David Geisser, Co-founder and CEO of ZATAP; Klaus Simonmeyer, the Vice President of Strategic Accounts for EMEA here at Identiv. We will start with a quick overview of our partnership and dive into how our unique alliance can solve big challenges within the industry through our innovative technologies to lock out counterfeits, verify authenticity, and keep high-end wine brands thriving.
You'll even get to see it in action with a live demo and learn a little bit more about the technologies behind it. We'll then finish up with a Q&A session. In preparation for that, I'd like to invite you to please feel free to ask your questions as they arise throughout the presentation by simply typing in your question into the Q&A panel, and we will address each of those questions at the end. With that, Klaus, I will hand it over to you to get us started.
Thank you, Ryan. Yeah, welcome everybody. In the use case that we're going to be talking about today, three partners bring in their individual core competencies in order to form a real state-of-the-art solution. Actually, I'm particularly looking forward to it because what makes this use case a bit special is that it's not just one out of many use cases where everyday items become part of the IoT. Here, one of the oldest and most traditional cultural assets of mankind, wine, gets a unique digital identity which secures its authenticity and history and also protects it from being tampered with. The three components of this solution are, apart from the wine itself, obviously a scientific approach to verify the authenticity of wine, which is the part that Genuine-Analytics is doing.
The next component is an NFC tag from Identiv, which has a variety of both digital and mechanical security features. Third, we have the digital backbone of the whole thing, which is the ZATAP application interface with a blockchain-based security infrastructure. This shared mission brought up a solution with a whole variety of benefits. It provides evidence to the buyers of expensive wines that their product is genuine. The NFC interface and the cloud backend provide additional user experience. The tamper-proof features make it harder for criminals to come up with faked wines and a couple of others. Yeah, wine is the keyword today. Now is the time to talk more about wine. This is why I'm handing it over to the Genuine-Analytics team now.
Thank you very much, Klaus. Welcome, everyone. First, I would like to tell you quickly how Genuine-Analytics got started. In 2018, we initiated the development of a new authentication methodology that will be presented now to you in the webinar together with the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland. After a year, based on the promising initial results, we founded the company Genuine-Analytics. We are a startup company, a pretty young one. In 2022, we transferred the technology to Genuine-Analytics, and we started our own lab here in Switzerland. We also initiated the development of our ARAM system. That means Artificial Intelligence Recognition and Authentication Machine. It is a combination of mass spectrometry and artificial intelligence data handling. In 2024, we conducted the first line authentication for an auction. Finally, now today, we have above 1,400 prestigious wines in our database, which is growing.
Next slide, please. Next slide, please. Okay, thank you. Alcoholic beverages, top food for target. If we think about what was the driving force in 2018 for us to start the development of a completely new authentication methodology, you may get the answer from these OPSON actions. If you look at the 2021 activity of OPSON, they confiscated about 15 million liters of counterfeit alcoholic beverages, most of it wine and beer. Three years later, this effort that Europol made in Europe in about 27 countries, the number was a little bit smaller, but still at a very high level of about 850,000 liters of beverages, again, mostly alcohol, totaling EUR 91 million of a value, were removed from the market. That was the motivation. It's not only that there are expensive wines that are counterfeit.
There are also wines that are in the secondary market, in the collector's market. There is an enormous economic effect of these counterfeit wines. That is on the next slide, please. With the $350 billion wine industry, one assumes that about 20% of these total revenues, that means about $70 billion, are faked and are annual losses for the global wine industry. I assume we all agree that the consumer should have confidence that the wine they purchase is genuine. This is not only true for new wines, but it is particularly true for collector's items for which you might have to pay tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars per bottle. There is a need to measure and to have a solution to put in place to prevent those trying to substitute high-value wines in the global market. Now, next slide, please. That is the wine authentic.
If you look at companies that are working on the authenticity proof of wines, for example, wine fraud, they say on their website to date, there are no scientific tests that are accurate enough to tell that a liquid inside the bottle is definitely from the particular block of land. That means from a vineyard or that is from a specific vintage. That was the situation before we started to develop it and now have it. What this company does here, they look at capsule, at cork, at label, at vintage tags, at the paper aging, of course, at the glass composition, at the glue. That is answered wrong. We now have developed a disruptive analysis methodology for the authentication of wines at vineyard and vintage level. Next slide, please.
Maria, the project manager of our winePROOF method, will now introduce you to this new world of mass spectrometry.
Thank you, Markus. Yeah, we can move to the next slide, please. Thanks a lot. Usually when we use mass spectrometry, what we usually do is that we inject the desired compounds and we measure them, as you can see here in the ion chamber. We use the mass detector at the end and we generate compounds or peaks with specific intensity, so a specific profile. Now you can imagine the moment we have the same compounds in the presence of the wine, the final profile that is being generated totally changes because we have the ion suppression effect. That means that the wine matrix might enhance or suppress the final signal that we get. This is the advantage of our methodology because we can generate unique profiles of each wine that we want to measure.
If we move to the next slide, we will see the entire workflow that we follow here in Genuine-Analytics. When a wine bottle arrives in our facilities, we use a laser beam, as you can see in picture number one, and we open a tiny hole on the bottle shoulder. Then we can take the desired wine sample and we transfer it in our labs. In picture number three, we mix it with the master mix solution, which consists of around 30 chemical compounds that are not present in the wine. We inject it into the mass spectrometer and we generate the final results that we next then compare to the wine reference library that we have.
By analyzing, of course, the data, we generate an authenticity score that is included in the final wine certificate that the customer can access through the ZATAP application, ZATAP application that we will demonstrate later on. He can see the profile and the wine authenticity score. Now, what's the advantage of this method? How are we able to discriminate all these wines? As I said before, we mix the wine with this chemical solution, master mix solution, which consists of 30 compounds. These 30 compounds allow us to generate multidimensional results. This, of course, increases the complexity of the whole story. Exactly this is the benefit of our method.
As you can see, you can imagine that if we have a 2D plot, two dimensions, and we want to discriminate, to separate all these compounds that you see on the left side of your slide, this might be a bit complicated because you can see that some points are getting crowded, some wines cannot be very well separated. The moment we have a 3D plot, immediately things get much better. We have three dimensions, we have a bigger space, and we can rotate our plot, as you can see in this red circle. In some cases, in one angle, the wines or the compounds might get crowded. The moment we rotate this 3D plot, immediately we can separate this crowded area. You can imagine what is going to happen when we have this 132 dimensions that happens in our case with our methodology.
You can try to imagine that we have 132 dimensions and we can rotate it in different angles, different ways. This increases the efficiency of our method and we can discriminate millions of wines, as I will demonstrate in the next slide, please. As Markus said before, the main challenge, analytical challenge in wine authenticity is that we cannot tell with high accuracy where the wine comes from in terms of vintage and origin. With our method, and please follow me here with the calculations, if we assume, for example, that today all over the world we have roughly, let's say, 15,000 wine producers and each of them produces 10-15 different wines, and we want to calculate in a range of 70 years. This gives us about 30 million different wines exist today all over the world. The question is, can we discriminate these wines?
Is it possible? The answer is yes. With our method, as I said before, by using these 132 multidimensions, we are able to discriminate all of them. Of course, practically, the data analysis is quite complicated. You can imagine this, but therefore we use, of course, machine learning, algorithms, and AI as a tool to facilitate the data analysis. In the next slide, you will see the wine reference library that we have at the moment. If you are interested and curious to see which wines are included in this database, you can scan the QR code and you will access all the list of the wines that we have. I can tell you that this has already exceeded 1,400 reference wines, with the oldest one being from 1874.
Around 80%, 87%, I'm sorry, are red wines, and around 60% of them come from France, which is a country with tradition in winemaking. If we move to the next slide, I can tell you that we have already participated in some auctions. We have used this methodology in auctions. Here I picked up four bottles as an example to demonstrate which ones we have already authenticated. The first bottle is rotated. The other one from the backside, we took the picture from the backside so that you can see the NFC tag that is applied on the bottle shoulder. As I described before, we followed the same workflow and we generated the wine certificate with the TISTIS score, as you can see, that the customer can access by using the application on his mobile phone.
Of course, if we move into the next slide, please, thank you. Our application, our solution is not applicable. It's not only for vintage fine wines. We can use it for any wine. We can use the safety NFC tag applied on the bottle, and this provides a unique wine profile even at the bottling of each new wine. We can detect any opening of any cork piercing or bottle opening. Of course, the user, the owner of the bottle or the customer can use his mobile phone, scan the NFC tag, and then he can have access to the score or any information about the bottle. We can trace and track exactly the final results. Of course, as I said before, our customers are not only auction houses.
The customers can be winemakers that want to protect their brand and achieve an increased value in the secondary market. Any wine lover that wants to use this as a tool to compare the wines with the original ones. Of course, collectors or investors that want to authenticate their wines can use this application. Thank you because we were curious to see if our method is applicable in other alcoholic beverages cases. The answer is yes. As you can see in this PCA plot, we are able to discriminate whiskeys with different blendings and with different alcohol content. In the next slide, you can see that our method can be used also for non-alcoholic beverages like waters. We can discriminate waters that derive from tap, like tap water or mineral water and even lab water.
With this, I come to the end of this presentation, but I think we can move on to the demo to show you how we can use the application and scan a real bottle in real time. I will use my mobile phone, but I think you can also see it soon on the screen. Now I'm using the ZATAP application, and with having my mobile phone, and Markus will help me with, please, I'm going to scan, like to touch the NFC target immediately. You see the phone vibrates, and you see that this is the result that has been generated. Markus, can we repeat it, please?
Yeah, I think
Because I want to show that we can also, exactly, this is what I wanted to show you. Here you see the winePROOF, the producer in this case, Château Chenet.
Of course, you can, by clicking on this option here, scroll down and you see the wine certificate with the TISTIS score and all the details with the dates and everything, all information. Now with Markus, we will try something more complicated. In real time, we will show you how Markus will destroy the NFC tag. You can show it like that, yeah, with a knife. He took it out. He literally destroyed it. Now I'm going to, I will try to scan. Oops, I think I pressed something. I'm sorry for this. Okay, yes, I need to scan it again. You see, I will try to scan it. Did we overdestroy it?
Probably you did. I would just want to invoke it. Can you set it to zero and then?
I can try to repeat the whole process. Yeah, I think because the phone cannot even take it.
Well.
We can destroy the second bottle, maybe.
Yeah, that doesn't help so much. If you just clean it up and restart it.
Yeah. No, I think, yeah. If we come here to, oh, sorry. I think it's totally destroyed.
Yeah.
Okay. We can either try to destroy the second bottle that we have as.
As split free.
Yeah, but I think we will get the same results. This is how the app works. Yeah, it's quite convenient and extremely fast. The user can scan it and then he can see the results. Sorry for this. Maybe I need to stop sharing my screen. I think we move on to David, if I'm not mistaken.
Yeah, just one second, getting the screen back up here. Let's see. Maria, are you able to make me the host again? Somehow it's not showing me.
I will try to.
Okay, let me see why that happened. Sorry about this. Okay, let's see. Oh, here we go. I found it.
Did you find it? Okay.
Yes, I got it.
Yeah, I'm sorry I couldn't find it.
No worries. Okay, and we are back. There we go. Okay.
Okay, then I think it's my part again. Maria, you've been talking of the NFC label, so let's have a bit of a closer look at it. I mean, from NFC, most of you probably know it's a wireless technology which connects digital tags to the internet. Usually, this is done by means of an NFC-enabled mobile phone. Or in other words, if you use your phone to tap an NFC tag, which is attached to an everyday item like a wine bottle, then this wine bottle becomes connected to the Internet of Things. The tech that we use in this particular application has been specially designed for wine bottles. It has a special layout and comes with four tamper loops and optimized antenna structure.
It has very, very fine antenna lines and gaps in between the lines, which prevents even fraud by, for instance, using a syringe to replace the original wine with an inferior product. It comes with a special adhesive that makes it almost impossible to remove the label without leaving physical or digital evidence. Once one of the four tamper loops is broken, the chip will reliably flag it and tell you that the bottle has been tampered with. The same happens, by the way, if you destroy it completely. The round form factor antenna of the tap provides good connectivity regardless of the brand of the phone. Different phone brands have different antenna shapes inside, and because there is no standardization, the round form factor ensures good connectivity with all mobile brands. This is simply important because it's essential for a good user experience.
If users tap the phone, tap the tag with their phone, they need reliable and immediate feedback without having to move the phone around in search of the antenna sweet spot. The chip that we're using here is the NTAG424DNA from NXP, which comes with a strong cryptography of 128-bit. It has the so-called SUN message authentication. SUN means Secure Unique NFC Message, which means that the content of the NFC message transmitted by the tag is not static. Each time the tag is being tapped, it is freshly generated. Similar as the UID, conventional NFC tags have a static UID. UID means Unique Identifier, just by the way. The static UID could be cloned. The NTAG424DNA's UID is freshly generated and verified by a server upon every tap, and this makes it impossible to be cloned.
Furthermore, we have 528-bit keys, which are used to make sure that only genuine chips work with the application. These keys are only known to the tag manufacturer and the customer. As long as these keys are not being disclosed, it is impossible for criminals to clone or tamper with the tags. Yeah, and this brings us to the digital backend of the whole solution. David, I hand it over to you.
Thank you very much, Klaus. And also thank you, Markus and Maria, for showing how the solution works. I just want to quickly wrap things up. It is a pleasure to work with Genuine-Analytics and NXP and also obviously with Identiv on this solution. As you could see in the demonstration of Maria, people can simply use the ZATAP app to access the digital wine profile through a simple tap with their smartphone. The only thing it needs is to touch the smartphone, to touch the NFC tag with the smartphone in the same way you use your smartphone to pay. The chip gets then read out, and the ZATAP application confirms the authenticity of the product and the sealing of the NFC tag. There are three types of outcome. The tag is scanned, it works, and it's sealed.
That means the bottle is not tampered with. This was what we saw in the first part of the demonstration. The second option is that the tag is still working, which means the bottle is authentic, but the sealing is broken. This is actually what Maria wanted to show, but for some reason, the tag got destroyed completely. In this case, the application cannot read it out, which means it's not sealed anymore, but it's also not proven authenticity anymore because the chip does not work. If there is a check mark on both sides, the bottle is authentic, and the NFC tag is still sealed, then the digital wine profile is displayed in the ZATAP application. The digital wine profile additionally is stored as a non-fungible token on the blockchain. This can happen on the Ethereum blockchain or on the Polygon blockchain.
Both are public blockchains which offer a high level of immutability. In other words, this information can, again, not be tampered with, and this information can also not be changed post. That means even if Genuine-Analytics or ZATAP would want to change this information that is originally stored on chain, we are not able to do it. That gives a very, very high level of security for the entire solution. Last but not least, the application provides a secure and immutable connection between the encrypted NFC tag that is dynamically encrypted, as Klaus explained, and to the secure and immutable stored NFT on chain. Long story short, it's a very simple system where everybody with a smartphone can find out if a wine bottle is authentic or not, or in this case, if it's proven by Genuine-Analytics or not.
Everybody can prove if the bottle is sealed or not. With just a few more clicks, the history of the wine, all the certificates, the digital wine profile can be accessed on the smartphone. Very simple, but very secure. That is the goal of the solution.
Great. Thanks, David. Okay, we will get into Q&A momentarily. I see a lot of questions in here. Loving all the engagement. If you have not already, please add your questions, and I'll give you a quick overview of how we can support you in next steps while you're getting the rest of the questions in. I have Markus, Maria, David, and Klaus' contact information here up on the screen, but we will also provide this in our post-webinar email along with the recording. Do not hesitate to reach out to them. They can assist you with a consultation to discuss your distinct project needs, product samples to help you find the right products for your project, design customization, system or encoding support, and even helping you tap into our vast network of partners within the industry. Okay, with that, we will jump right into Q&A.
Okay, first question here. Looks like the tag has been designed specifically for these wine bottles. Would other form factors be available as well?
Yeah, I think this one is for me. Actually, it has been designed especially for wine bottles while other form factors are available. Actually, even though all wine bottles might look pretty much the same, they are different. They have different diameters of the necks of the bottles and stuff. So actually, each wine bottle is its own design, and it is not restricted to wine bottles. We can do the design to fit to almost any object.
Okay, great. Next question. How long do the NFC tags last? Fine wine could be stored for 30 plus years.
Yeah, this is also for me, I think. I mean, the data retention period is defined by the chip manufacturer, by NXP. I think in this particular case, even though I have to look it up to be sure, but I think they are guaranteeing 30 years of data retention. I will look that up, and Ryan, provide me with the contact if you have it, then we can answer it offline after the webinar.
Yes, absolutely. Okay, it looks like, David, this one's for you. Is it difficult to set up ZATAP for my products? What is needed to get started?
No, that's not the case. It's actually very simple. What's important to mention is that we automated a lot of the backend work. You can create your brand, first of all. In this particular case, Genuine-Analytics was the brand because they were also the ones who prove and check the authenticity. You can add your products digitally. You can add images and any other content that you want to associate with the product. Basically, with a simple click, you can connect this information to a specific NFC tag. It's pretty simple to test. For those of you who want to try out themselves, you can simply go on fitchital.zetap.io and give it a try because until you actually connect the physical item to the digital content, it's for free.
Only once you want to publish it, there is some cost involved.
Okay, and next question. How much does winePROOF cost the customer?
For me, that depends on the value of the bottle, of course. You can have a look at our wine database. If the wine that you would like to take is in the database, you can ask us for a quote. We'll send you a quote. You might ask now, does it make sense? Analysis is always the same. Yes, the analysis is always pretty much the same. However, you know, if you have a bottle here that has a value of CHF 50,000, obviously the insurance and all the precautions have to be taken that it gets back intact and in case something happens, that appropriate insurance is in place. That's why we have a model that is dependent on the value of the bottle.
Okay. Is the business model that the customer deliver the wine to your facility for IDing the bottles and then ship back to the customer? Do you have only one facility?
That's the current business model, yes.
Okay. Let's see. How long? Oh yeah, we already got that one. Okay, good. What measures have you taken to ensure that the profile of your method cannot be faked?
The thing is that our profile does not rely on or does not reflect the composition of the wine. We add, as Maria said, around 30 compounds to the wine. No one knows exactly which compounds, and no one knows exactly at what concentration. The wine matrix has an impact on the compounds we are measuring. From this point of view, it's an indirect measurement. Even if you would analyze your wine that you would like to fake in detail for the whole composition, all the thousand or whatever chemical compounds are in the wine and would exactly match the signal, you would not get the profile that we are getting.
Okay. How about sustainability and eco-friendliness of the tags?
I think this one is for me. The tags can be provided in an eco-friendly version, which means that the carrier material of the antenna lines is no longer made of PET, which is simply the standard in the industry. It can as well be made from paper, which is, of course, much more sustainable. We can produce these tags without an etching process involved. Yes, sustainability is on our radar, and we can make the tags with sustainable materials upon request.
Great. Thanks, Klaus. Let's see. Does ZATAP only work for wine or also for other products? David, over to you.
Thanks for this one. No, it's actually a variety of products. We originally started the service for fashion products. We have also authenticated and connected other physical products in sports and entertainment with this technology. As you can see today, for example, there are some game-worn jerseys behind me where we proved not just the authenticity of the product, but also that history. For example, that those have been worn at a certain game from a certain player. Generally, it always comes down to the physical side where Klaus already mentioned that there are different shapes and different sizes and types of NFC tags. If we can apply one of these securely encrypted NFC tags on the product, then we have a check on the physical side. From the digital side, there are no limits in terms of products that can be added.
As I mentioned, we have worked with several industries. It is definitely not exclusive for wine and also works for other luxury or lifestyle products.
Yeah. I will note we have done some other webinars where we have covered some other use cases. On the Identiv website under webinars, we have some on-demand webinars there too if you're interested in checking those out. Okay, next question. How did you manage to not only distinguish the vineyard, but also identify the vintage and even the specific wine with such precision with one single method?
Okay, I think that's for me. As I showed in the slides, the advantage or the benefit of this method is exactly these 132 dimensions that we generate. This profile makes the data analysis complicated, of course, but at the same time gives us a better insight on the wine and the wine profile. Of course, for analyzing this data, we need to use machine learning algorithms and AI. Otherwise, manually, we wouldn't have been able to achieve this. That's the reason why how this works.
Okay. What is the typical turnaround time for getting the authentication certificate after a bottle is received in your lab?
The analysis time is extremely short. Preparation as well. Just adding that process time, you could probably get it back in half a day. However, as we are working batch-wise, I would say it takes about a work week till you get the result back.
Okay, great. How do you collaborate with wine producers looking to generate profiles for their new wines?
We will take the samples, of course, not through a hole in the bottle. We have to go there, take the sample there, make the profile, and then proceed as indicated with the laser process. Taking the sample directly from the shuttle where the bottles are filled in the filling process.
Okay. It looks like we've got one last question. If you have any other questions, now is the time to send them along. Can other parameters important to wine consumers, such as cork taint, be measured and the results added to the NFC tag?
Yes, the answer is yes. We are able to measure, yeah, also the cork taint, and then we can insert these results in the NFC tag, and the customer can follow the profile, the wine profile, or the wine information that he needs. Yes, that's possible.
Awesome. Okay, we'll give it another couple of seconds here, see if anything comes in. Oh, let's see. Okay, we've got two more here. Are end consumers accustomed to using the digital touchpoint?
I'm happy to end this one.
Okay. Yeah.
Please, Klaus and also Markus and Maria, add your two cents if you want. What we can say is that customers get more and more used to tap and read out NFC tags. The obvious answer is that this is primarily driven by the payment industry. A few years ago, you had to launch an app before you could tap a product. This is also what Maria showed us in the demo. In fact, you can even read the tag without opening the app, and then it will redirect you into the app, or it will redirect you to the specific landing page. That means people do not need to install anything on the phone. Since they get more used to tap to pay, there is also more and more adoption for NFC tapping.
Additionally, we see a slight difference between the different age groups. For Generation Z and Generation Alpha, it's almost a native, like they are quite native with this technology, while older generations eventually need a little bit more education. Even there, we see more and more adoption. I would say similar to QR codes that also had a little bit of time until they got standard in the industry, this is the same that we currently see with NFC tags.
Okay. We have one more. What are the predictive capabilities for this testing method when applied to a sample that is not specifically in the 1,400 wine database?
Yeah. I think then we will struggle a bit, right? I think we need to have the reference, the wine in our reference library. Otherwise, we cannot compare the profiles. We cannot compare the results. That's why, as Markus said before, you can visit our website, have a look on the reference wine database that we have, and then check if we can perform the analysis or not.
Okay. Another one. Have you already analyzed biodynamic wines? Are all the 132 parameters showing any results that make the analysis as safe as a conventional wine?
Yeah. Can you repeat the question or?
Yeah. Have you already analyzed biodynamic wines? Are all the 132 parameters showing any results that make the analysis as safe as a conventional wine?
Yeah. The analysis that we performed showed that we have a 98% accuracy. We know that our method works for 98% of the cases. Of course, the times that we usually struggle is when we have very similar wines from very similar vintages. I think this is still a better percent than having a fake wine that you do not know what is inside.
Okay. It looks like that is it for questions. That brings us right to our finish time. Thank you, everybody, so much for joining us. Thank you for our speakers and our panelists. Hope everyone has a wonderful rest of their day, evening, and week. Thank you, everyone.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.