State-of-the-art RFID technology applied to intensive bottling lines for controlling production, logistics and distribution
The Cantina Santadi winery is located in Sardinia and produces over 2 million bottles/year, 700,000 of which are equipped with NFC tags and managed through the Autentico Chain solution developed by Autentico and Elision, an Italian company specialised in logistics and anti-counterfeiting solutions with RFID/NFC technology. The two wines Terre Brune and Rocca Rubia are now unique and traceable in the global market thanks to Autentico NFC technology, providing consumers with a tool to verify authenticity.
Autentico ensures that bottles are traceable from the bottling line to the end consumer: a way to keep distribution under control, drastically reducing parallel market problems, protecting consumers and official distributors. NFC micro-labels (visible or hidden) make each bottle of wine unique, recognisable from all others and traceable at any time. Moreover, the direct contact between the winery and the end customer, who reads the NFC label on the bottle – simply by holding their smartphone or tablet up to it – opens the door to endless marketing possibilities, both in terms of customer retention and revenue growth.
RFID Project and Solutions
The winery needed to make the two Terre Brune and Rocca Rubia wines traceable and non-falsifiable, while also providing consumers with a tool to validate their authenticity, so as to control distribution, in the global market, by curbing parallel market problems to protect distributors. The identified requirements were solved by the Autentico CHAIN platform, which has specific hardware equipment and software systems for intensive bottling, typical of the Santadi winery. NFC TAGs were applied in-line on the two Rocca Rubia and Terre Brune wines, while an RFID tunnel was installed in the bottling line for detecting the NFC tags and associating boxes with bottles. The Autentico team provided the HF/UHF RFID Tunnel with an integrated weighing machine, a unique machine that can record RFID data on boxes and bottles and simultaneously verify their weight and production compliance. The machinery is designed and built directly in Autentico’s workshops.
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The installation did not create any space problems in the bottling line: the tunnel was placed in the space previously dedicated to the weighing machine. Bottles and their boxes and pallets can now be tracked in a timely manner, providing business management benefits in terms of real-time production control and automated picking thanks to NFC tags. The plant has been operating since 2021 and has already acquired more than 2 million bottles.
Bottles equipped with non-cloneable NFC tags are therefore protected against counterfeiting. Through the Autentico NFC platform, including the Android and iPhone app and a Back Office area, the consumer can verify the product’s authenticity. The Autentico app launches automatically when you hold your smartphone up to the NFC tag, but can also be started manually by downloading it from the main stores for iPhone and Android systems. When you hold your smartphone up to the NFC tag on the bottle, the product is verified and, if the product is authentic, the card containing the details of the selected wine is displayed, even if you do not have an internet connection.
RFID Tags used by Cantina Santadi
It is crucial to select the most suitable NFC tag model for the winery’s needs. The tag was chosen based on its shape, position and type of application. Cantina Santadi applies Autentico’s 5x5 cm non-cloneable NFC tags on its Terre Brune and Rocca Rubia bottles. The NFC tags used are suitable for intensive applications and the extended size enables detection even on boxes of 12. They are specifically designed for intensive production: thanks to a special protective membrane, they do not break in the event of shocks or vibrations.
Picking and Order Fulfilment Stage
The Autentico CHAIN platform receives orders from the company’s management system via the interconnection procedure. The pistol-grip tablet is equipped with an NFC reader that can read bottle tags. Order fulfilment guarantees order consistency, minimising the possibility of human error. To date, the system allows the fulfilment of all order types, including for products not equipped with NFC tags. After closing the order, the Autentico CHAIN platform sends the tag list of the bottles included in the order to the Cloud; from this moment on, the bottles are visible in the distribution via the reading app.
