Imperial Tobacco The Imperialist 3 | Page 20

#Regulation TRACK & TRACE EXPERIMENT Imperial Tobacco acceded the experiment on marketing and tracking tobacco products that is being conducted in Russia between January 15 and December 31, 2018. T he project aims at testing efficacy of the marketing mechanism and of interaction of the tobacco market participants for preventing dumping and the use of tobacco products turnover schemes not stipulated by the law. The results will allow to assess feasibility of switching to the mandatory Track and Trace (T&T) system for cigarettes. Producers will mark each pack and block with a machine-readable identification and verification code to certify their authenticity and encode information on the product, its production and movement along the market chain. During the experiment, producers will mark and launch a limited batch of cigarettes. The batch will only move via the registered experiment participants. After the distributors, trade chains and retail stores participating in the experiment receive the marked products, they will register it, and feed data into the informational system of the experiment operator – Center for Developing Advanced Technologies (CDAT). Product information will be supplemented with every change of product owner, and the end user will be able to track the entire history of their product starting from the production plant. The buyers will be able to scan the bar code on the cigarette pack, and get information on it via a free app. They will be able to file a relevant notification in The marking will come as a DataMatrix code. The code will be stamped on the lower end side, and contain detailed information – name, producer, date, time and place of issue. Just like earlier, the pack will bear the floor price and production date. Moreover, producer can upon its discretion duplicate the code in the alphanumeric form in order for the cashier to be able to enter the code manually in case of scanning errors. The scheme of marked products turnover and interactions between the experiment participants The end user can scan the code with a special mobile app and get information about the pack, check its authenticity. In the retail channel, the cashier scans the code when the product is being sold to the end user, and information about the sale and the code gets registered at the cash desk and in the bill of sale, and is remotely fed into the operator’s informational system. case the product data does not correspond with the real status. The pilot project is expected to allow to test efficacy of the T&T mechanism for ensuring authenticity of tobacco products, as well as countering the importing of counterfeited products. 6 4 5 2 Participation is voluntary, and comprises two stages 1 ST STAGE: 15 JANUARY – 30 JUNE 2 ST STAGE: 1 JULY – 31 DECEMBER • T  he producer and other participants install the required hardware and software for T&T unique code application and scanning, as well as joining the electronic document flow with the operator’s informational system • I  ncreasing the number of participants and test products, and expanding sales geography – the testing is conducted under the conditions similar to the real turnover • T  he producer marks a limited batch of tobacco products with special codes received from the experiment’s operator • T  he batch passes through the product distribution chain (through the retail chain at the first stage) in the testing mode up to the end user • S  umming up the first experiment stage – 1 July 2018 • M  arking for imported products is also stipulated • S  umming up the second experiment stage – 31 December 2018. The factory sells the products to a trading company / distributor 1 The factory received a set of codes to mark the packs Upon transferring the sale information, the code of the sold pack is uploaded from the monitoring system. 3 The distributor sells them in the retail channel *At each stage, information about the pack distantly transfers to the information system The Империалист |  | 20