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YEKATERINBURG, July 9South Korea and South Africa have become interested in Russian equipment for labeling drinks in aluminum cans, said Pavel Bulgakov, general director of the Callisto group (formerly Antares Vision Group) — the company is now negotiating the supply of this solution to Belarus.
In December 2022, the company created a machine for labeling beer and low-alcohol drinks. Data Matrix codes are applied using a domestically produced laser marking machine before bottling drinks. As the company explained, this ensures printing without a negative effect on the operation of a high-speed production line. 
< br />“Now we are filing applications for national patents at the international level. And we are negotiating the supply of this solution to enterprises even outside the Russian Federation: for example, in the Republic of Belarus. We also have, for now, cautious, but we hope there will be active interest from some non-CIS countries – South Africa, South Korea and others,” Bulgakov said at the Innoprom-2024 site.
He noted that before the creation of a machine that applies QR codes with a laser to the lid of an aluminum can, the task of applying codes in high-speed production had not previously been solved anywhere in the world. Russian technology makes it possible to practically eliminate situations where finished products have to be rejected due to unreadable code. This equipment is suitable for large production — it operates at speeds of up to 80 thousand caps per hour.
In the future, sales of the solution on the international market, according to Bulgakov, may occupy the bulk of the business — the only question remains in how many years this will happen. “In the beverage industry in different countries, labeling is being introduced gradually. Now we see literally 2-3 jurisdictions where this process is in an active phase. We know that other countries are looking at the experience of those who have already begun to label drinks,” said the general director. He added that international sales could become the leading business segment in the next five years.
«If we are talking about the volume of the market of neighboring countries, we are talking about the CIS countries — then the volume of products in an aluminum can exceeds 5 billion units per year. We expect to take at least 50% of this volume for ourselves. The world market, it is clear , absolutely bottomless… Perhaps the total sales volume outside Russia will be much larger than sales within our country, simply because of the scale of the global market itself,” commented Bulgakov.