AKD claims first with tobacco directive-ready tax stamp

Croatia’s AKD says it has developed a tax stamp design that will fulfil the safety feature requirements of the EU Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) due to come into force by May 20.

By that date, EU member states must be ready to go live with their national traceability and security feature systems for cigarettes and roll-your-own tobacco manufactured or imported into the EU, based on a unit-level unique identifier for track-and-trace purposes, plus five other security features.

AKD is the national ID issuer of the Republic of Croatia, and says it is now offering its new tax stamp design to other EU member states.

It also says it has also received an International Identification Number in accordance with ISO / IEC 15459 – meeting one of the requirements of the Implementing Decision 2018/574 on technical standards for the establishment and operation of tobacco traceability systems.

Last month, De La Rue secured the UK contract to provide tobacco safety features for the approximately 1.7 billion cigarette and hand rolling tobacco packs sold in the UK each year. Along with the unique ID, the UK’s safety feature list includes a guilloche pattern, colour-changing ink, microprint, anti-Stokes ink, and a molecular taggant.