The technological and innovation development of the company is extensive, it includes traceability of liquors and cigarettes
SICPA is a Swiss multinational that globally no longer requires filing; has 35 offices on the planet and is widely known for being the company that provides the security inks and markers that protect most of the banknotes that circulate in the world and has stood out for developing a series of solutions that guarantee the traceability and authentication of a range of products and brands, with the aim of avoiding fraud, tax evasion and counterfeiting.
In the Dominican Republic, SICPA has been since 2019 the provider of the technology that provides the traceability and fiscal control solution for alcoholic beverages and cigarettes carried out by the General Directorate of Internal Taxes (DGII), known as Traffic.
SICPA provides the State collecting body with a marking for alcohol and tobacco products where it integrates visual and electronic security. It is a subject in which the foreign firm has accumulated experience since 1927, when it began to produce inks that are already in 90% of banknotes around the world, including the US dollar, the euro, and the yen. Even the Dominican peso has that ink and security design.
SICPA’s identification, marking, authentication and traceability systems have the highest security standards and range from security inks for tickets, passports or sensitive documents, to oil and gas integrity management, pharmaceutical serialization, digital stamps, telecommunications income monitoring and brand protection solutions. These are topics of which José Luis Plazas, vice president of SICPA Dominicana; and Amaury Abreu, general manager of SICPA Dominicana, spoke with great interest and certainty to the newspaper elCaribe.
In a mid-morning meeting (as part of a visit to the newspaper’s director, Nelson Rodríguez) both executives talked not only about the projects that the company develops on Dominican soil, but also beyond its border, in the Latin American and Caribbean region. .
Since 1968, the Dominican Republic has championed the issue of control, with a stamp that completed its cycle and what the DGII has done is a process of modernizing these tax stamps and transforming them into a material security that existed before and providing digital security. . Uniting this material and digital part, what has been sought is to obtain a greater flow of information and control. A modernization of the tax system in this area, using what is called traceability or tracking.
With this flow of information, what is sought is to change a paradigm of control and supervision, using technology, a technology provided by SICPA. The tool is used by the DGII and clearly the collection agency is the one that has control and supervision.
“With all that accumulated experience, plus other alternatives that we are working on for business, we have very advanced fiscal traceability products, let’s say that the most advanced technology is now available in the Dominican Republic, applied in the Traffic project,” said Abreu.
The stamps, for example, that are placed on alcoholic beverages, so that the customer, the merchant of that drink and the public in general, have the guarantee that they are obtaining the original product and not “jack of all trades”, they come with some devices, of special inks that make a visual effect to the change of the light (when it is placed on the bottle of the drink). They have other security and guarantee components inserted, such as an individual code for each bottle and each cigarette pack that goes on the market. It has an alphanumeric code, where the consumer can verify that the product really comes from the factory from which it is said to come and that it arrives with a legal origin tax payment.
Other solutions offered by the company with a global presence – explained José Luis Plazas – are security inks for passports and ID. Those inks can be tactile, colored with or without color change attributes and other optical effects.
It also provides hydrocarbon integrity management. It combines advanced fuel marking technologies with a sophisticated IT platform, which helps governments track the distribution of hydrocarbon products and quickly detect illicit activities.
SICPA works with other countries in the region, but the Dominican Republic is its most recent contract. Therefore, it benefits from all the experience and evolution that has taken place in other countries. It is the most comprehensive project that exists in all of Latin America, even with the control of all products (liquors, beers and others).
“We also offer telecommunications income monitoring. This solution is used to verify the income from telecommunications services in real time ”, he explained.
As for brand protection solutions, there are various technologies to protect brands and / or products from counterfeiting. The company that Luis Plazas and Amaury Abreu explained also has the Sicpatrace available, which is a traceability system through digital tax stamps and technology used by governments to control supply chains related to production, import , export and distribution of products with excise duties.
Pharmaceutical serialization solutions are almost a century old and their efficiency has been proven with the serialization of more than 400 billion products around the world. SICPA is a member of GS1 Healthcare, a company that has worked for many years to provide standards related to identification, barcoding and data exchange for commercial finished products.
In the dialogue with SICPA, the issue of the Certus digital seal was addressed, a digital solution that allows document issuers to secure valuable documents.
“We are a technology provider, we have solutions that are exclusive to the government and what we do is support and assist the tax administrations to control taxes, and in this case for the Dominican Republic with the Traffic system, to control the tax. selective consumption for liquors, beers and cigarettes is of great importance ”, pointed out José Luis Plazas, a native of Colombia. Amaury Abreu is Dominican.
