Australian-made IoT offering enables ‘digital birth certificates’ for wine throughout $350 billion global market

An Australian company has developed an electronic solution embedded in bottle caps to provide wine authentication and other information to customers.

Cellr announced on Monday that it expected to create up to 22 new jobs by commercialising the technology, which uses miniaturised electronics and a combination of near-field communication and radio-frequency identification. A scan of bottles by a customer’s smartphone brings up provenance and branding information, while also offering automated stock management for retailers and others. 

Co-founder and director Chris Braine said, “By creating tech-enabled lids that embed themselves directly into the bottling line, we give wine producers a handsfree solution for creating ‘digital birth certificates’ that can be retrieved by the consumer whenever, wherever, while taking away the guessing game of a product’s authenticity.”

It’s estimated that perhaps 20 per cent of the $350 billion global wine market is impacted by counterfeit products.

Development of the solution is being assisted through a collaborative project linking Cellr with contract bottler Portavin and the South West Development Commission, and backed by a grant from the Advanced Manufacturing Growth Centre.

“Cellr’s technology has endless applications across a broad range of industries beyond beverages, allowing end-users to verify the product, seek further information or, in time, be linked to supporting information for the product they are purchasing – it’s proof that Australia can, and continues to manufacture, world-leading solutions,” said AMGC managing director Jens Goennemann.

Picture: AAP

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