Milan, 19 November 2019 – The e-WAK, the connected version of Guala Closures’ WAK® screw cap for wine, has just received the “New Technology” award of the Innovation Challenge SIMEI 2019, the competition that promotes and rewards the best product or process innovations presented by exhibitors at SIMEI. A new intelligent technology that enables each bottle of wine to become a “connected bottle”: the chip, placed inside/on the top of the closure , can be read by any smartphone, providing a certificate of authenticity and all information on the product, engaging them directly and promoting brand loyalty.
Next to the technical-scientific committee, comprised by university professors, experts and representatives of end-user companies, there will then be a technical panel of international experts who will select the most deserving innovations. The panel’s opinions will then be combined in the final rankings with the scores that the finalists obtain with the votes from the public at Enoforum, the largest technical-scientific congress in Europe for the wine industry.
Marco Giovannini, CEO of Guala Closures Group, explained: “We are very pleased to receive this new award and very satisfied that the panel recognised the value of our connected wine closure. It’s a solution that significantly raises the potential offered by a wine closure, representing an excellent alternative for wine producers that use traditional caps. A technology that brings benefits, in terms of traceability and anti-counterfeiting, in relations between the end-customer and producer, thanks to the presence of the chip in the cap. This technology is not just dedicated to wine, but is addressed to the alcoholic beverages market in general: bottle of alcoholic beverages and spirits can become “connected” thanks to this innovation, which is already available for various types of closure.”
Guala Closures Group has always employed cutting-edge technologies and NěSTGATE ™, its range of connected closures for wine, spirits and olive oil, is one of the avantgarde solutions developed over the years by the five research and development centres spread all over the world. At the beginning of the year, the e-WAK had already won the Discretionary award for excellence at the Alufoil Trophy 2019.
Guala Closures Group
Guala Closures Group has more than 4,700 employees and operates in 5 continents through 29 production plants and markets its products in over 100 countries. The Group sells over 15 billion closures each year with a 2018 turnover of 543 million Euros. Thanks to a policy of continuous business development and technological innovation, the Group is recognized as a global point of reference in the production of alcohol safety closures and is a leading manufacturer of aluminium closures for spirits, wines and beverages.
From August 2018, Guala Closures S.p.A. has been listed on the STAR segment of the Italian Stock Exchange, entering the FTSE Italia Mid Cap index in September 2019. Find out more at www.gualaclosures.com.
