ING Arena, the 15,000-capacity hall on the Brussels Expo site at Heysel in Laeken, has adopted STAR to run the reusable cups it serves drinks in. The system, built by the Belgian technology firm Aucxis, gives every cup its own RFID tag and ties that tag to the transaction that paid for it. The deployment was announced in September 2026 and makes ING Arena the first large Belgian events hall to run STAR permanently rather than for a single event. The venue traded the name Palais 12 for ING Arena in September 2023, and its audience size swings hard from one evening to the next, which is the part that makes cup logistics awkward.
The cup knows who paid for it
The deposit refund is usually the queue. Most reusable cup schemes hand back a token and rely on staff counting cups at a return desk, which is slow at the end of a show and easy to game. STAR replaces the count with an identity: at the point of sale each cup’s RFID tag is linked to the visitor’s payment transaction. On the way out the visitor hands the cup to a smart collection point, the return registers automatically and the deposit goes back to the person who paid it, with no app to download and no manual registration. Because each cup is identified rather than tallied, it can only be refunded against the transaction it was issued on, which is why Aucxis frames the approach as fraud prevention as much as convenience.
Aucxis has not published the operating frequency, the air interface standard or the tag type used at ING Arena, and neither the announcement nor the STAR product pages state them. Treat the RFID layer as undisclosed rather than assume UHF, HF or NFC. Terms used here are defined in the RFID glossary.
From the bar to the wash line
STAR does not stop at the return. It drives the full lifecycle of the cup, from distribution at the bar through to processing and checking at the wash line, giving the venue visibility of cup flows and return rates rather than an end-of-night estimate. It is integrated directly with the Restomax point of sale already running at ING Arena, a Brussels hospitality POS specialist founded in 1990, and Aucxis says that was done without disrupting operations.
Why the timing is not a coincidence
From 1 September 2026, disposable cups are prohibited at events held in public spaces in Brussels regardless of the material they are made from, and organisers must achieve a minimum return rate of 90 per cent on reusable packaging. ING Arena is an indoor hall rather than a public-space event site, so the rule does not necessarily bind it directly, but it sets the direction of travel for Belgian venues.
That 90 per cent threshold is the detail worth holding on to. A reusable cup only earns its environmental case if it comes back, so a return rate stops being a talking point and becomes a number an operator has to evidence. Per-cup RFID identity produces exactly that record as a by-product of refunding the deposit.
ING Arena piloted the system first at La Madeleine, the Brussels concert hall that holds between roughly 400 and 1,400 people depending on its configuration. Scaling from that to a 15,000-capacity room is the real test of the collection points and the wash line throughput.
Martin Mahoux, Director of ING Arena, said: “STAR was a logical choice. The solution had already proved its worth in environments at least as demanding as ours, in terms of visitor numbers and pace. It is this proven reliability that convinced us. For a hall like ours, which welcomes tens of thousands of visitors a year, it was important to take the step towards reusable cups. With STAR, we do that without detracting from the visitor experience, and with a considerable improvement in control and efficiency for our teams.”
Aucxis was founded in 1983 and is based at Stekene in East Flanders, running auction software for fish, flower and fresh produce markets alongside an RFID division serving industrial, logistics, healthcare and event customers. Vesta Software Group announced its acquisition of the company on 10 September 2026. STAR was already in use at sports stadiums and temporary events before ING Arena, which is the first to make it permanent.
More deployments like this one are collected under Sustainability and Hospitality.
Read more at https://star.aucxis.com/ing-arena-kiest-voor-slimme-herbruikbare-rfid-bekers-met-star
