PR: NXP and GCL Technologies deliver IoT and NFC solution for wine and spirits closures

NXP Semiconductors and GCL Technologies, the Technological Research Center of Guala Closures Group, a world leader in security closures, today announced that after one year of intensive research and development, both companies are proud to present the industry's first fully integrated and mass scalable Near Field Communication (NFC) tamper evident closure solution dedicated to the wine and spirits industry.

The new solution will be part of Guala's Internet-of-Closures (IoC) smart family products which feature NFC tamper evident closures to protect brands and enable advanced anti-counterfeiting and tamper-proofing. Additionally, brand owners can have direct engagement with consumers – with a simple tap, consumers can learn more about the beverage in question, such as its provenance, a cocktail recipe or reviews, and after opening can extend the dialogue to access exclusive VIP offers, loyalty rewards and more.

"We are pleased with our collaboration with NXP and are proud of this achievement. Our Internet-of-Closures platform – a dedicated and optimized IoT platform – will allow spirits and wine brand owners to control their product life and interact with consumers in a newly conceived way," said Piero Cavigliasso, group innovation technology director at Guala. "Anti-counterfeiting has been an important focus since the beginning of the Guala history and the opportunity given by NFC and IoT technologies will bring us into a new era."

According to Vandagraf International, by 2026, at least 5.5 billion wine and spirit closures are said to be enabled to interact automatically via the internet.

"The demand for smart, IoT connected consumer products increases dynamically," said Alexander Rensink, business segment manager of smart products at NXP. "NXP’s collaboration with Guala Closures focuses on the next steps, by adding innovative security features and making tags suitable for in-demand use cases, such as secure authentication and proof of non-tamper."

The innovative NFC closure is powered by NTAG 213 Tag Tamper technology. NTAG 213 Tag Tamper features an ECC-based originality signature (including an option for a brand unique signature), tamper detection with once-opened status, current status awareness for dual-state applications, and unique on-chip URL creation. Detection of an unauthorized product opening is made possible with a simple tap of any mobile NFC device, with no application needed.

About Guala Closures

Guala Closures Group is the worldwide leader in the production of closures for wine and spirits with 14 billion closures produced per year thanks to its international presence in 20 countries through 26 plants. The Group has more than 4,000 employees, 5 R&D Centers in Italy, UK, Bulgaria, Ukraine and Mexico and 1 Group Technology Center in Luxembourg. The Group posted revenue around 500 million euro in 2016.

About NXP Semiconductors

NXP Semiconductors N.V. (NASDAQ:NXPI) enables secure connections and infrastructure for a smarter world, advancing solutions that make lives easier, better and safer. As the world leader in secure connectivity solutions for embedded applications, NXP is driving innovation in the secure connected vehicle, end-to-end security & privacy and smart connected solutions markets. Built on more than 60 years of combined experience and expertise, the company has 31,000 employees in more than 33 countries and posted revenue of $9.5bn in 2016.