Alan Birks, deputy director of Gambica, has been promoting the launch of a pan-European initiative aimed at stamping out counterfeit products over recent months. 
The question seems to be not whether you own any counterfeits, but how many. Recent estimates by the research organisation IHS, show that over 10 per cent of all electronics in the global supply chain are counterfeit. 

The universal nature of portable devices, from smartphones and digital cameras to medical, industrial and security apparatus, has been driving the growth of the counterfeit battery market. 

It’s important that OEMs make a concerted effort to weed out counterfeit components when manufacturing new devices. For example, at Accutronics we work closely with our customers to tackle this problem head on and have incorporated algorithmic security into our smart batteries. This means that a device can be programmed to shut down if a counterfeit battery is detected. It also supports traceability.

I wholly support the new European Market Surveillance Support Initiative (MSSI), and hope that we will see it being supported by encryption technology to programme counterfeit goods out of the marketplace for good. 

Kind regards, 

Neil Oliver
Technical marketing manager 

Accutronics Ltd