The year 2022 brought many challenges both globally and in our country. The climate crisis, international conflicts, the deep impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on humanity, and economic fluctuations were felt differently by all segments of society. In such a period, SICPA Global, with more than 3000 employees in 5 continents, continued to provide high-tech brand and product security solutions to various stakeholders in the public and private sectors, and continued to invest as a reliable partner in the fields of secure ink production and inspection, product track and trace systems, brand protection solutions for governments, central banks and industry.
As SICPA Turkey, with the awareness of our responsibility in this challenging process that our country is going through, we continued our projects and investments uninterruptedly and continued to contribute to the public sector in reducing tax losses and to the private sector in ensuring product safety and protecting brand value by minimizing counterfeiting with our current practices. After the most devastating earthquakes in the history of the Republic, we participated in the "Turkey One Heart" donation campaign and with the donation we made, we tried to support our state and our people to heal their wounds. We have endeavored to alleviate the burden of our staff affected by the earthquake by covering their rent for 1 year. As SICPA Turkey, we will continue to do our best for the earthquake region in the future.
Today, in addition to the solutions we provide for verification and traceability, the trust shown in our company to protect the value of products and brands and to contribute to the cultural heritage of our country has enabled us to realize different projects. Our completed and active projects in Turkey are Turk Trace and Design, Development and Sales Channel Management of Ticket and Ticketing Products in Museums and Archaeological Sites.
Our reliable and integrated Product Monitoring and Tracking systems solutions, which monitor and inspect products in order to protect against unregistered and counterfeit products, which constitute one of the biggest problems of recent years, have been used by both the public and private sectors for many years. With our Turk Trace projects, an annual average of 10 billion products were registered with the banderoles we produced between 2007 and 2020. In addition to visual inspection, users can check product information via SMS, website, or mobile applications, thus protecting them from counterfeit and unregistered products.
Since 2020, SICPA TR has established the current technical infrastructure in Turkey for banderoles. In this context, SICPA provides services to the manufacturer, from the design of the banderoles to the trial production processes, production supervision and technical support. We provide all consumables such as secure inks, paper, molds, etc. used within the scope of the business and report the usage data of the resources we provide to the Revenue Administration.
In accordance with the lease agreement signed with the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Central Directorate of Revolving Fund Management on 19.03.2018 for the Design, Development and Management of Sales Channels of Tickets and Ticket Products in Museums and Ruins, we successfully continue our activities in 83 museums and ruins and 12 sales points with approximately 500 employees. In 2022, we hosted approximately 25 million visitors in our museums, while the number of visitors increased by 11% in the first 6 months of 2023 compared to the same period last year. During the pandemic period, when museums were closed for a year, we continued to strengthen the perception of "museums for everyone" with the visitor experience enhancement and inclusion trainings we routinely prepared for our box office staff and other auxiliary staff. In our mobile application, which we offer to our visitors under the name of Turkeys Museums, we provide various information about more than 300 museums. The application also allows visitors to purchase Müzekart and MuseumPass online and visit museums without visiting the box office. Today, we provide audio guidance services in 44 museums and ruins. With the support of our Minister of Culture and Tourism, Mr. Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, we aim to introduce our visitors to night museology at the Maidens Tower, Galata Tower, Pamukkale Ruins and Ephesus Ruins in the near future.
Knowing that product safety will become even more important in the future, we continue our efforts to make more comprehensive investments in this field, to establish long-term partnerships on the basis of mutual trust, and to increase our support and contribution to both the public and private sectors. With the motivation to make the world safer for everyone, we are working hard to serve our customers and partners in an environment of mutual trust and to produce smart solutions for ever-changing security needs. I would like to thank my valuable colleagues and all our business partners who work devotedly on this path.