Applied DNA Sciences (APDN) is looking to expand its operation in Europe under the guidance of Chris Taylor, the firm’s new European Director.
Taylor, formerly Managing Director of RedWeb Technologies, is an industry-recognised leader in forensic marking and has been tasked with helping APDN to gain further traction for its botanical DNA-based anti-counterfeiting and product authentication solutions in Europe.
The new Director Europe, who will report to Tony Benson, Risk and Security Director, told SecurityNewsDesk the technology developed by APDN is “unequivocally the best that is available” and the firm is looking at new high-value markets, such as military and textiles, to help grow its brand prevalence.
He stated: “We are aiming to significantly expand the technology into the UK and Europe and redefine the forensic marking space. Forensic marking has becoming commoditised, leaving a crying need for leading-edge forensic authentication technology to move the sector forward.”
Taylor highlighted counterfeiting of military components as “rife” as large numbers of military electronic components have been identified as counterfeit.
APDN’s DNA-based technology has been mandated by the US Defence Logistics Agency (DLA) for use in the authentication marking of military chips and is looking to bring this level of forensic credibility into the UK and European markets.
“What APDN is doing is introducing an authenticated mark, using the APDN SigNature DNA tag, to authenticate components at the manufacturing point, or at a distribution point,” said Taylor.
“If you are buying components for the armed forces and those components are counterfeit then you have a very high health and safety and national security risk. If you can authenticate those components using DNA then you can overcome that problem – and that is what APDN is about.”
Another key market APDN is aiming towards is textiles and the ability to authenticate high-value apparels to aid brand protection as a measure to combat the growing level of global counterfeiting – the economic impact of counterfeit is predicted to be 2% of the global economy, around $1.7 trillion, by 2015.
The firm is hoping the targeting of high-value apparels and the military sector can help develop organic growth throughout the verticals as APDN continues to be recognised as the “most rigorous anti-counterfeit science available”.
