Expensive barcodes on cigarette packs

IT company Aureus+ won the Finance Ministry’s tender for supplying barcodes on cigarette packs as of May 1, with a price of €3.7m. It has no employees and no previous experience in the area. It would not say who will undertake the actual work. Another bidder in the tender was local firm Allexis, which already supplies the barcodes in Ireland. The Slovak price is rather high, €2.14 for a thousand barcodes. The EU estimates the price at €0.40-1, while the price is €0.50 in the UK and even €0.27 in Lithuania.

(SME/1)