Aura Blockchain Consortium Eyes Growth as EU Pushes Digital Product Passports

The most useful luxury accessory in Europe may soon be a digital passport tucked into a label, a QR code, or a sales record. Aura Blockchain Consortium is positioning itself for that shift, with CEO Marcel Härtlein linking the company’s next phase to digital product passports, AI, and the trust gap that still shadows fashion’s supply chains.

The timing is not subtle. The European Union’s Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation entered into force in 2024 and explicitly introduced the digital product passport, while the European Commission’s textiles strategy says it will bring in a passport for textiles and set design requirements so products last longer, are easier to repair, and can be recycled more cleanly. A European Parliament study has already sketched the payoff: producers, supply-chain tiers, regulators, sorters, recyclers, and consumers all stand to gain from clearer traceability. That matters in a category whose footprint is still growing fast. The Commission has said global clothing and footwear consumption is expected to rise 63 percent by 2030, from 62 million tonnes to 102 million tonnes.

Aura is not starting from zero. The consortium was established in April 2021 by LVMH, Prada Group, and Cartier, with OTB joining in October 2021 and Mercedes-Benz Group in May 2022. Based in Switzerland, it describes itself as a non-profit, blockchain-agnostic platform for luxury brands worldwide. On September 12, 2024, Aura said it had surpassed 50 million registered luxury products, a scale that suggests the company is already functioning as more than a pilot project.

That matters because the real test of digital product passports is not the technology itself but what a buyer, a resale platform, or a repair shop can actually verify. Prada said Aura SaaS, launched in January 2022, was designed to help brands move faster and at lower cost while addressing authenticity, ownership, warranty, transparency, and traceability. Loro Piana and Louis Vuitton have already used Aura-linked digital certificates and QR codes to trace products or stones from farm or mine to finished item. In practice, that turns a handbag or coat from an opaque object into one with a documented life story.

For luxury, that is the opportunity and the risk. If Aura can make traceability feel as routine as a care label, it could become the infrastructure behind the next era of compliance and customer trust. If not, AI-plus-blockchain will remain a seductive promise wrapped around a very practical question: who can prove what, and when?