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T he war against counterfeiting and brand piracy continues to be fought by the automotive parts and aftersales market. Sophisticated reproductions of original parts have made it virtually impossible for even the most highly trained eye to distinguish real from fake. It’s also a problem estimated to cost the aftermarkets industry hundreds of millions of dollars a year in lost revenue, and this doesn’t include the incalculable damage caused to a company’s reputation. FFake or substandard parts can also endanger life as cheap imitations can often fail because they are made from inferior materials. Fake brake parts, for example, are an enormous safety risk. These parts are also highly unlikely to have been tested to the rigorous industry safety standards bonafide manufacturers have to observe. The market for counterfeit parts in the automotive industry could be worth more than the annual gross domestic product of Canada, Brazil or Italy. According to World Trademark Review, the estimated global economic cost of counterfeiting in the automotive industry could reach $2.3 trillion this year (2022). In Europe, it is estimated that € 2.2 billion ($2.4 billion) is lost annually to counterfeit tyre sales alone, while counterfeit battery sales effectively steal € 180m ($198m) from OEMs. The growth in automotive parts counterfeiting is driven by increased industrial globalisation, extended supply chains, brand power, weak regional law enforcement, derisory criminal penalties, the growth of the internet as the ideal conduit for distributing counterfeit goods, and the impact of high-quality reprographic technology that has made it easy and affordable to copy brand packaging. Indeed, it was the ability to reproduce top quality copies of documents, labels and packaging that heralded the development of security devices like holograms whose effects could not (and still cannot) be fully replicated or simulated by normal reprographics methods. Holograms are used in a wide variety of formats: as tamper-evident labels and seals, shrink sleeves, blister foils, transfer foils, threads and tapes, hang tags, wet-glue and in-mould labels, laminating films and a variety of other packaging and labelling media to protect branded goods. The ability of the technology to provide effective brand protection lies in continuous innovation, invention and evolution of holographic techniques, which have created easily recognised, yet difficult to copy layered authentication devices. Hologram adopters Innovation has also been accompanied by holograms used in combination with other authentication technologies. In such solutions, they often provide overt first line 18 AFTERMARKET NOVEMBER 2021 BUSINESS www.aftermarketonline.net HOLOGRAMS DRIVE PARTS AUTHENTICATION The automotive parts industry is benefitting from authentication holograms authentication while covert features such as scrambled images, microtext, UV sensitive or other specialist inks provide second line authentication for trained examiners equipped with appropriate decoding equipment. Additionally, data matrix, QR codes or other serialisation methods can be incorporated into holograms to provide tracking and tracing ability. Successful anti-counterfeiting campaigns in the automotive parts sector recognise that it should not be the sole responsibility of the untrained customer to examine a hologram to check its validity. Rather, the onus is on manufacturers and enforcement agencies to prevent fakes penetrating the supply chain in the first place. Therefore, successful brand protection programmes now involve formal examination and inspection systems throughout the distribution network. The more enlightened manufacturers have seen the value of this. It’s one of the reasons why holograms are included as an integral part of many global anti-counterfeiting strategies. For example, products manufactured by brake manufacturer Brembo are characterised by an anti- counterfeiting system such as a scratch card, a hologram or a QR code to reassure customers that the part is genuine. This allows people to check immediately if the product they have bought is original, tracing its provenance on the internet with its unique code. Philips is another automotive components’ manufacturer who is lighting the way to better authentication using holograms. The company raised the issue of the sale of counterfeit Xenon HID headlamp bulbs becoming increasingly commonplace in the UK, especially through online sales channels, with a dual-pronged attack on the problem. To fight the fakes, all Philips HID Xenon bulbs were supplied in new packaging with individual holographic ID on it. This incorporated both a QR code and BY Dr. Paul Dunn, chair of the International Hologram Manufacturers Association (IHMA)