Where RFID Meets the WMS

The integration between RFID infrastructure and a WMS typically happens through middleware that translates raw EPC data from readers into actionable events the WMS can consume. At the protocol level, most modern WMS platforms expose RESTful APIs or support message queues such as MQTT and AMQP. RFID middleware, whether from Zebra, Impinj, or a custom LLRP-based stack, filters and deduplicates tag reads before forwarding them as structured inventory events. This decoupled architecture means the RFID layer can be upgraded or swapped without rewriting WMS business logic.

The key integration points fall into five operational stages: receiving, put-away, pick-and-pack, cycle counting, and shipping.

Receiving Workflows

When a pallet or carton arrives at a dock door, fixed UHF RFID readers mounted on the portal capture every tagged item as it passes through. The middleware cross-references each EPC against the Advance Shipping Notice (ASN) already loaded in the WMS, flagging discrepancies instantly. Instead of a warehouse operative scanning each case individually, the entire inbound shipment can be verified in seconds. The WMS receives a receipt confirmation event, updates on-hand inventory, and triggers the next step in the workflow automatically.

This approach cuts receiving labour by as much as 90 percent in high-volume facilities and virtually eliminates keying errors that cascade into downstream picking problems.

Put-Away Optimisation

Once goods are received, the WMS issues put-away directives based on velocity, product dimensions, and storage rules. RFID adds a verification layer here that barcodes struggle to match. As a forklift operator deposits a pallet into a racking location, overhead or aisle-mounted readers confirm that the correct items have been placed in the correct bin. If the tag reads do not match the expected location assignment, the WMS can immediately send a corrective alert to the operator handheld or vehicle-mount terminal.

Over time, the read data also feeds slotting analytics. The WMS can identify which SKUs are consistently placed in suboptimal locations and recommend re-slotting to reduce travel time, a feedback loop that would be impractical to maintain with manual scan data alone.

Pick-and-Pack Verification

Order accuracy is where RFID integration delivers some of its most measurable ROI. During wave or batch picking, operatives working through a pick list can have their completed totes or cartons validated by an RFID tunnel or desktop reader at a pack station. The reader captures every EPC in the container and the middleware compares the list against the WMS order lines. Any missing or unexpected item triggers an exception before the carton is sealed.

For operations handling high-value goods, apparel, or pharmaceuticals, this level of automated verification replaces manual piece-count checks entirely. Error rates in facilities using RFID-verified packing typically fall below 0.1 percent.

Shipping Confirmation

The final integration point mirrors the receiving workflow in reverse. As packed cartons pass through an outbound dock-door portal, the readers capture a complete manifest of every item leaving the building. The middleware reconciles this against the WMS shipment record and, if everything matches, triggers carrier label generation, ASN transmission to the customer, and inventory deduction in a single automated sequence.

If a carton is missing or an incorrect item is detected, the WMS can halt the shipment and alert the dock supervisor before the trailer departs. This last line of defence prevents costly short-ships and mispicks from reaching the end customer.

Technical Architecture Considerations

Deploying RFID within a WMS environment requires attention to several infrastructure details. Reader placement and antenna tuning must account for the RF environment of the warehouse, including metal racking, conveyor systems, and neighbouring read zones that could cause stray reads. GS1 EPC encoding standards should be followed to ensure interoperability across trading partners.

On the software side, the middleware layer needs robust event filtering, including RSSI thresholds, dwell-time logic, and zone-based deduplication, to ensure the WMS receives clean, trustworthy data rather than a flood of raw observations. Many organisations also implement an EPCIS repository alongside the WMS to maintain a full audit trail of every tag event for compliance and traceability purposes.

Network bandwidth and latency matter too. A busy dock door reading 500 tags per second can generate significant throughput, so the link between readers, middleware, and WMS should be sized accordingly, with failover buffering in case of temporary connectivity loss.

The Bigger Picture

RFID and WMS integration is not a plug-and-play project, but it is a well-understood one. The technology standards are mature, the middleware ecosystem is broad, and the ROI benchmarks from early adopters are well documented. For warehouses still relying on barcode-only workflows, the question is no longer whether RFID integration makes sense, but how quickly the transition can be planned and executed.

This article first appeared on RFID News (rfidnews.co.uk), the independent news site for RFID and NFC. Republication and AI use are welcome with RFID News credited as the source and a link to the original.

The reason it happens at all is that the whole system depends on a machine successfully reading a strip of paper looped around a handle, and paper strips get crumpled, folded under, soaked and torn off. Thirty-nine per cent of mishandling in 2025 happened during transfers, where a bag has to leave one aircraft and find another in under an hour without ever being seen by a human. Here is the journey your suitcase actually takes, and the precise points at which it can slip out of the system’s sight.

The tag is a licence plate, not a record

When the check-in desk prints that long sticky strip, it is not writing your itinerary onto it. It prints a ten digit number, the bag’s licence plate, along with a barcode of the same number, your destination airport code and your flight. The first three digits identify the airline. The rest is a serial.

Everything else lives in a database. Your name, your connection, the aircraft your bag should be on, whether you have actually boarded. The paper does not know any of it. It knows who to ask. This is why a torn tag is catastrophic in a way that a torn boarding pass is not: without that number, a bag arriving at a sorting hall is genuinely anonymous, and staff have to open it and hunt for a name.

Down the rabbit hole

Behind the check-in desk your bag drops onto a belt and enters one of the most elaborate machines any of us regularly use without seeing. Heathrow’s Terminal 5 baggage system runs to roughly eleven miles of conveyor beneath the building, with bags travelling at speeds that would be alarming at eye level.

The first thing that happens is a scan. Not one scanner but an array of them, arranged in a ring so that a barcode facing in any direction has a chance of being seen. If they get it, the bag is routed automatically: through security screening, along the right branch, onto the make-up carousel for its flight, where a handler loads it into a metal container called a unit load device that goes into the aircraft hold.

If they do not get it, the bag is diverted to manual encoding, where a person looks at it on a screen or in the flesh and types the number in. That is the first place time is lost, and on a tight connection, time is the only thing that matters.

The read rate problem

Here is the number that explains most lost luggage. Optical barcode arrays in baggage halls typically read somewhere between 85 and 90 per cent of tags on the first pass. That sounds excellent until you multiply it out. One bag in eight needs human help, at every airport, on every leg.

The reasons are physical rather than clever. A barcode needs line of sight. Loop it around a handle and it curves, which distorts the stripes. Let it fold back on itself under the weight of the bag and it disappears entirely. Wrap the case in cling film at the airport, as many travellers do, and you have added a layer of glare. Soak it in rain on an open apron in Manchester and the ink runs.

Radio frequency identification, or RFID, solves exactly this. An RFID tag is a chip with a printed metal antenna that answers by radio instead of being looked at, so it does not care about orientation, folding, curvature or dirt. It has no battery: it draws the sliver of power it needs from the reader’s own signal. Read rates in baggage trials sit above 99 per cent. Our explainer on why UHF RFID dominates this kind of work covers the physics of that.

So why did it take airlines thirty years?

Because of a problem that has nothing to do with technology. An RFID bag tag costs pennies more than a paper one, and an airline handling a hundred million bags a year is looking at a serious annual cost. The awkward part is who gets the benefit.

Your bag’s most dangerous moment is a transfer, and a transfer usually involves somebody else’s airport and frequently somebody else’s airline. An airline that fits RFID tags to its own bags pays the whole cost while the savings land partly with competitors and hub operators. Everyone waits for everyone else. Economists call it a collective action problem. Aviation called it not this year.

Two things broke the deadlock. The first was Delta Air Lines, which in 2016 spent around 50 million dollars fitting RFID to its own operation across dozens of American airports, on the argument that a bag it could actually see was worth more than the tag cost. It worked, the tracking success rates were widely publicised, and other carriers stopped treating it as exotic.

The second was rules. IATA Resolution 753, which came into force in 2018, requires member airlines to track every bag at four points: when they take custody of it, when it is loaded, when it is transferred, and when it is returned to the passenger. It does not mandate RFID. It mandates knowing, which in practice pushes airlines towards whatever technology makes knowing cheap. Compliance passed the halfway mark across the industry only recently, which tells you how large a lift it has been.

Where it still falls over

Even a fully tracked bag can go astray, because tracking tells you where something is, not where it should be. A bag correctly scanned onto the correct aircraft is still wrong if you failed to board. A bag can be perfectly tracked into a container that misses its slot because the aircraft turns round in forty minutes and the crew ran out of time.

And then there are the days when the system itself falls over. When Heathrow’s Terminal 5 opened in March 2008, staff could not get through security or find parking, bags backed up, and the new baggage system was overwhelmed within hours. Thousands of bags went astray and more than five hundred flights were cancelled in the first ten days. Nothing was technically broken in the way people assume. The machinery worked. The humans and the processes around it had not been rehearsed at full load.

AirTags answer a different question

Plenty of travellers now drop a small Bluetooth tracker into the suitcase, and they are genuinely useful, but it is worth being clear about what they do.

An Apple AirTag or similar does not know where it is either. It shouts a coded identifier over Bluetooth, and any passing iPhone that hears it anonymously reports the location back. In an airport full of phones, that works beautifully. In an aircraft hold at 38,000 feet, or a rural sorting shed at three in the morning, nothing is listening and the location goes stale.

The real difference is who the information serves. Your tracker tells you your bag is still in Amsterdam. The airline’s system tells the airline which flight it should be put on next. For years those two facts sat in separate universes, with passengers standing at a desk insisting their bag was in Schiphol while an agent explained that the system had no record.

That gap has closed. Apple’s Share Item Location feature lets you generate a temporary link showing the tracker’s position and hand it to an airline, and 36 carriers now accept it, British Airways, Virgin Atlantic and Aer Lingus among them. The link expires after seven days or when you are reunited with the bag. It is a small feature that quietly ended a decade of arguments at baggage desks.

What actually helps

Book longer connections, because transfers are where 39 per cent of mishandling happens. Remove old tags from previous trips, because a stray barcode is exactly what a scanner will read confidently and wrongly. Photograph your bag before checking it, since describing a black four wheel case to a harassed agent is hopeless. Put a paper label with your name and destination inside, which is what staff look for when a tag is gone. And keep receipts for anything you buy while waiting, because delayed baggage expenses are usually claimable.

Frequently asked questions

How often do airlines actually lose bags?

Around 24 million bags were mishandled worldwide in 2025 against five billion passengers, which is fewer than five per thousand. Most of those were delayed and reunited within a couple of days. Permanently lost bags are a very small fraction of the total.

What is the most common cause of a lost bag?

Transfers. Thirty-nine per cent of mishandling in 2025 happened when a bag had to move between flights, usually in a short window and often between different airlines or airports.

Does RFID stop bags getting lost?

It removes the biggest single failure, which is a barcode that cannot be read. RFID tags answer by radio regardless of orientation or damage, pushing read rates above 99 per cent. It does not fix human or scheduling errors, so it reduces mishandling rather than eliminating it.

Should I put an AirTag in my suitcase?

It is genuinely useful, particularly for proving to an airline where your bag actually is. Just be aware that it relies on other people’s phones being nearby to report a location, so it goes quiet in aircraft holds and remote facilities.

What is IATA Resolution 753?

An industry rule in force since 2018 that requires airlines to track each bag at four moments: taking custody, loading, transferring and delivering. It does not specify a technology, but it made airlines invest in knowing where bags are rather than assuming.

What should I do the moment I realise my bag has not arrived?

Report it before leaving the airport and get a property irregularity report reference, since that number is what every later claim hangs on. Give a delivery address, share your tracker link if you have one, and keep receipts for essentials you have to buy in the meantime.

We explain the machinery behind ordinary life, without the jargon. Join the RFID News newsletter, or read more about tracking in logistics and transport.

This article first appeared on RFID News (rfidnews.co.uk), the independent news site for RFID and NFC. Republication and AI use are welcome with RFID News credited as the source and a link to the original.

That single fact explains almost every strange thing tracking does. It explains why the page updates in sudden jumps rather than smoothly, why a parcel can sit in “in transit” limbo for two days and then appear at your door, why “out for delivery” can be true for nine hours, and why the system occasionally loses a parcel completely and then finds it again in Warrington. There is no continuous truth being recorded. There are only the moments when the number passed a machine. Here is what those moments actually are.

The label is the whole story

Look at a Royal Mail or Evri label and you will see more codes than you expect. There is the human readable tracking reference. There is usually a one dimensional barcode, the classic stripes, which encodes that reference. Increasingly there is also a two dimensional code, either a Data Matrix or a QR style square, which can hold far more: sender, service level, destination postcode, weight class and the routing instructions in one small block that survives being scuffed.

Royal Mail also uses a distinctive four state barcode, the row of short vertical bars of differing heights that looks like a heart monitor trace. Each bar has one of four possible shapes, and the sequence encodes the postcode down to a delivery point suffix, which identifies your specific letterbox rather than just your street. Machines can read that pattern at extraordinary speed, which is precisely why it exists.

None of these codes contain a location. They contain an identity. Location comes entirely from where the reading happened.

The first scan happens before the parcel exists

When you order something and the tracking page says the courier is expecting your item, no parcel has moved. The retailer has sent the courier an electronic manifest, a data file that says a box with this number is coming, weighs about this much and is going here. The number is alive in the system before the box is taped shut.

This is the source of one of the great tracking frustrations. A parcel can show as “awaiting collection” for two days while it is in fact sitting on a shelf in a warehouse in Dunstable, or while it is already in a van, because nothing has scanned it since the manifest arrived. The retailer created the label. Nobody has looked at it yet.

Inside the depot, where the reading really happens

The big scans happen at sortation hubs, and they are genuinely impressive places. Parcels are tipped onto belts moving at several metres per second and pass through scanning tunnels: arrays of cameras and lasers arranged to read a barcode on any of the six faces of a box, at any rotation, without a human touching it. Alongside them sit dimensioning units that measure the parcel with light curtains and weigh it on the fly, because volume and weight decide what it costs and which vehicle it fits.

If the barcode is damaged or covered in tape, an optical character recognition system tries to read the printed address instead. If that fails too, the parcel is diverted to a manual station where a person reads it and keys it in. That diversion is often the invisible cause of a day’s delay.

Each successful read pushes an event into the carrier’s database: number, time, site, and often the specific chute. Those events are what the tracking page renders back to you in friendlier language. “Arrived at national hub” is a machine seeing some stripes at half past two in the morning.

Where RFID actually fits

Barcodes have one great weakness: they need line of sight. Something has to see them, which means every parcel must be presented, one at a time, to a scanner. This is where the other technology comes in.

RFID, short for radio frequency identification, is a tag with a tiny chip and a printed metal antenna that answers by radio rather than by being looked at. A reader can interrogate hundreds of tags at once, through cardboard, without any of them being visible or in any particular order. That sounds like the obvious answer to parcel tracking, and yet very few individual parcels carry one.

The reason is money. A printed barcode costs effectively nothing. An RFID tag costs a few pence. Across the 1,347 million parcels Royal Mail handled in the year to March 2025, or the billion plus now moving through Evri Group after its merger with DHL eCommerce UK, a few pence per item is a nine figure line on a spreadsheet for a benefit that a barcode mostly already delivers.

So the tags go on the things that come back. Roll cages, plastic totes, pallets, air freight containers and trailers are tagged, because those assets are reused thousands of times and the cost is spread across every journey. A gate at a depot door reads an entire cage of tagged containers as the forklift drives through, without anyone stopping. Retailers also use RFID heavily inside their own warehouses before the parcel is ever created, which is a story we tell in full in our guide to RFID in logistics from warehouse dock to last mile.

The last mile is a phone in someone’s pocket

Once your parcel is loaded into a van, the entire tracking infrastructure reduces to one device: the driver’s handheld terminal, which these days is usually just a rugged smartphone.

It carries the route, it scans each parcel as it is loaded and again as it is handed over, it takes the photograph on your doorstep, and it reports its own position by satellite as the van moves. When a delivery firm gives you a live map with a van icon and “you are stop 14”, that icon is the driver’s phone, not the parcel. The two are assumed to be in the same place, which is nearly always true and occasionally the source of a spectacular error.

Geofencing is what triggers the polite updates. The system draws an invisible circle around your address, and when the phone enters it the app fires the “arriving in a few minutes” message. Nothing on the parcel is involved at all.

So why does “out for delivery” last nine hours?

Because it is one scan, not a promise. That status is set when the parcel is loaded onto the van at around five in the morning. A busy urban round can carry between 150 and 250 stops. If you are stop 190, you are genuinely out for delivery from dawn, and you will see the van at half past six in the evening.

The time windows carriers show you are predictions from a routing model, updated as the driver progresses. They degrade badly when reality intrudes: a traffic closure, a block of flats with no answer, a driver taking a different sequence to avoid a school run. The prediction was never a commitment, it was an average.

The other classic, “we attempted delivery”, sometimes reflects a genuine knock and sometimes reflects a driver running an hour behind who scanned a card rather than lose the round. Carriers now counter this with photographic proof and timestamped location data, which is why doorstep photos became standard.

Why returns fly through and deliveries crawl

You have probably noticed that a return can be refunded within an hour of you dropping it at a shop, while the original delivery took three days of anxious refreshing. That is not because returns move faster. It is because the retailer has decided to trust the first scan.

When the parcel shop scans your return, that single event is enough for many retailers to release the refund, before the item has been transported, opened, inspected or restocked. They are making a commercial bet that most returns are honest, and that the goodwill of an instant refund is worth more than the fraud it enables. The parcel then travels back through the same slow network as everything else, quietly, while you have already got your money.

Frequently asked questions

Is my parcel being tracked live by GPS?

No. The parcel itself carries no locating device. Live van maps show the position of the driver’s handheld device, and everything else you see is a record of the last time the parcel’s barcode was scanned somewhere.

Why has my tracking not updated for two days?

Because nothing has scanned it. Long gaps usually mean the parcel is in transit between sites, sitting in a queue at a hub, or waiting on a manual station because its label could not be read automatically. The parcel is usually fine, it is simply invisible between sightings.

Why does it say out for delivery all day?

The status is set once, when the parcel is loaded onto the van in the early morning. A single round may hold well over two hundred stops, so being out for delivery at six in the morning and arriving at seven in the evening are perfectly consistent.

Do couriers use RFID on parcels?

Rarely on the individual parcel, because a few pence multiplied by a billion parcels is unaffordable. RFID tags go on the reusable assets instead: cages, totes, pallets and trailers, which can be read in bulk as they pass through depot gateways.

Can a parcel really be lost and then found?

Yes, and it is usually mundane. A parcel that falls behind a chute, gets bagged with the wrong route or has an unreadable label simply stops generating scan events. It has not vanished, it has stopped being seen, and it reappears the moment a human puts it back in front of a scanner.

Why do I get refunded for a return before it arrives?

Because the retailer chooses to act on the drop-off scan rather than wait for the item. It is a calculated commercial risk, taken because fast refunds keep customers buying and the fraud rate is low enough to absorb.

We take apart the everyday systems nobody explains properly. Get the next one by email, or read more on RFID in logistics and delivery.

This article first appeared on RFID News (rfidnews.co.uk), the independent news site for RFID and NFC. Republication and AI use are welcome with RFID News credited as the source and a link to the original.

Keio University SFC Research Institute is the research arm of Keio University’s Shonan Fujisawa Campus in Fujisawa, Kanagawa, and is directed by Yuji Ohgi. JRC is a radio communications equipment manufacturer headquartered in Nakano, Tokyo, led by president and representative director Kaichiro Sakuma. UPR, based in Chiyoda, Tokyo, rents and manages pallets and other logistics equipment and is headed by representative director Yoshiya Sakata.

Smart Pallet is a pallet information management system UPR developed in 2015 and has now run for close to ten years. Each pallet carries a DX tag built by JRC, an active RFID device powered by a primary, non-rechargeable battery. It transmits intermittently rather than continuously and has a separate management mode, a design that supports a read range of up to 300 m while giving roughly ten years of service with no battery change. The system is used to locate pallets and to automate and streamline collection, washing and reuse.

The problem it addresses is a large one. Between 500 million and 600 million pallets are in use in Japan alone, and they circulate internationally as well. Storing, collecting, washing and keeping track of them is labour intensive and losses are common, so rental pallet use has grown year on year. That growth has been helped along by Japan’s “2024 problem”, the April 2024 cap on truck drivers’ overtime hours, which tightened haulage capacity and pushed shippers towards more efficient logistics.

Where an active-only tag runs out of road

Intermittent transmission is what buys the DX tag its ten-year battery life, but it also means you cannot talk to the tag at the moment you want to. Changing a setting meant waiting for the tag to transmit before it would respond. And if the battery did go flat, the pallet went dark: its location could no longer be confirmed at all.

There were two operational gaps on top of that. Pooled despatch and collection alongside other companies’ rental pallets, which carry standard UHF passive tags, meant fitting a second, separate passive tag to the Smart Pallet. So did batch goods-in checks that link tagged cargo to the pallet underneath it. Finally, while active RFID reaches a long way, long range is poor at pinpointing. Short-range passive reads can place a pallet to within a few metres.

One tag, two modes

The DXh tag keeps the DX tag’s active radio and adds a passive chip compliant with the ISO/IEC 18000-65 protocol, so reads and writes can be done quickly with no battery draw at all. ISO/IEC 18000-65 was approved as an international standard in February 2026 and defines the air interface and communication method for sensor-capable RFID, including data exchange in 920 MHz band active and passive systems. It sits alongside the better known ISO/IEC 18000-63, the UHF passive air interface equivalent to EPC Gen2.

Worth noting for readers outside Japan: 920 MHz is Japan’s UHF RFID band, the regional counterpart of 865 to 868 MHz in Europe and 902 to 928 MHz in the United States. Both of the DXh tag’s modes work inside that one band, which makes this a hybrid active-passive tag rather than a dual-frequency one.

Folding the passive interface into the same device is what unlocks the new behaviour. The three parties list four gains from building the DXh tag into Smart Pallet:

• changing system parameters, including the transmit radio frequency, on the spot
• ultra-low-power wake from a dormant state
• joint collection of pallets that already carry standard UHF passive tags
• high-speed association of tagged cargo with the pallet carrying it, for consignment tracking

A tag whose battery has died can also still be read, because the passive side needs no power of its own.

Tested at a pallet depot in Chiba

The three parties built a demonstration system around the DXh tag at UPR’s pallet depot in Ichihara City, Chiba Prefecture, and ran evaluation testing there in July 2026.

They make two world-first claims. The first is for the tag itself, as the world’s first 920 MHz band hybrid active-passive tag, qualified in the release’s own footnote as a first “as a 920 MHz band tag conforming to the ISO/IEC 18000 series” and based on research the three companies carried out themselves, dated 29 July 2026. The second is for the system, as the world’s first practical and demonstration case of an ISO/IEC 18000-65 compliant pallet information management system. Both are the companies’ own claims rather than independently verified positions.

The prototype was shown at the 28th Automatic Identification Expo at Tokyo Big Sight from 9 to 11 September 2026, alongside a related seminar, “2026 EPC RFID FORUM x Automatic Identification Expo”. The work includes results from the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications programme “Research and Development for Expansion of Radio Wave Resources” (JPJ000254). The three say development of the new tag will continue from this prototype.

Read more at https://upr-net.co.jp/articles/news/pr/20260909

This article first appeared on RFID News (rfidnews.co.uk), the independent news site for RFID and NFC. Republication and AI use are welcome with RFID News credited as the source and a link to the original.

Cooperatie Hoogstraten, based in the Antwerp province, coordinates more than 1,000 growers who collectively produce around 45,000 tonnes of strawberries each year. Managing that volume while maintaining strict food safety standards and minimising waste has always been a significant challenge. Traditional barcode-based tracking could not keep pace with the speed and scale of the operation, particularly during peak harvest months when throughput at the cooperative’s distribution centre reaches its highest levels.

The cooperative turned to RAIN RFID, selecting passive UHF tags operating in the 860-960 MHz range. Each reusable plastic crate used in the harvest and distribution process is fitted with an embedded RAIN RFID inlay. As crates move through the supply chain, fixed RFID readers at key waypoints capture tag data automatically, without requiring line-of-sight scanning or manual intervention.

At the farm level, growers register each crate as it is filled, linking the tag’s unique identifier to the specific plot, harvest date, and grower. When crates arrive at the cooperative’s central sorting and packing facility, portal-mounted readers log every inbound shipment in real time. The system tracks each crate through quality inspection, cold storage, and onward dispatch, building a complete digital record of the product’s journey.

This level of traceability has brought tangible improvements to food safety compliance. In the event of a quality concern or recall, Cooperatie Hoogstraten can now trace any batch back to the individual grower and harvest date within seconds rather than hours. That speed is critical when dealing with perishable goods where delays can mean the difference between a targeted withdrawal and a broad, costly recall.

The RFID deployment has also strengthened cold chain integrity. By correlating crate-level tracking data with temperature logs from the facility’s monitoring systems, the cooperative can verify that strawberries have remained within safe temperature ranges throughout handling and storage. Any break in the cold chain is flagged immediately, allowing staff to intervene before product quality is compromised.

From a sustainability perspective, the move to RFID-tagged reusable crates has reduced the cooperative’s reliance on single-use packaging. The system tracks crate lifecycles, flagging units that are due for cleaning or replacement and ensuring that the pool of reusable assets is managed efficiently. Fewer lost or unaccounted-for crates means less waste and lower replacement costs.

Retailers receiving Cooperatie Hoogstraten’s strawberries benefit from the system as well. Delivery verification is faster and more accurate, with RFID-enabled dock doors confirming shipment contents automatically on arrival. Stock accuracy at the store level has improved, and the digital traceability record gives retailers confidence in the provenance of the fruit they are selling to consumers.

The project demonstrates that RAIN RFID is well suited to the demands of fresh produce logistics, where speed, accuracy, and traceability are not optional extras but operational necessities. For Cooperatie Hoogstraten, the investment has delivered measurable gains in efficiency, food safety, and sustainability across the entire strawberry supply chain.

This article first appeared on RFID News (rfidnews.co.uk), the independent news site for RFID and NFC. Republication and AI use are welcome with RFID News credited as the source and a link to the original.

An elevator in this sense is not a lift. It is a grain intake, storage and handling complex: discharge pits, drying and cleaning plant, silos and a laboratory. Kernel runs around 30 of them with 2.2 million tonnes of combined storage capacity, which makes harvest intake a queueing problem before it is anything else.

Ten years ago it ran on paper coupons

Kernel describes the mid-2010s procedure as linear and analogue. A guard registered the vehicle and handed the driver a paper coupon to carry on foot to the weighbridge operator. A laboratory technician walked out to the lorry, took a grain sample by hand and carried it back to the lab, where quality was written down. The driver left the cab several times per visit and, in the company’s phrase, walked in circles.

Why a card rather than a mobile app

The first fix was an NFC card issued against the trip. NFC is a short-range contactless technology working at 13.56 MHz in the HF band, and cards of this type are ISO/IEC 14443 contactless smart cards, the same family as a travel ticket or an access badge. The driver taps the card at the gate and the system creates the record.

The reason for choosing a card is the interesting part for anyone who designs field credentials. Kernel says that when it decided, there was no way to send information from the fields over mobile internet, and that constraint settles the architecture. With no connectivity where the trip starts, the credential cannot be a pointer to a cloud record, so it has to be the record: the card carries the driver, the vehicle and the crop being hauled. The reader reads data rather than looking it up.

The company says it now uses QR codes and barcodes alongside the cards rather than instead of them. Once there is connectivity at the gate, a printed code is cheaper per movement and identifies a booked trip just as well. The card keeps its edge where the credential has to be issued with no signal, or survive a harvest season in a lorry cab. Mixed estates of this sort are normal in logistics, and usually a sign that someone matched the carrier to the conditions.

Cameras, automatic weighbridges and a sampling arm

The second stage closed off the steps that were left. Cameras read number plates on entry and exit. Automatic weighbridges weigh the vehicle and push the figures straight into Kernel’s accounting systems, with no weighbridge operator in the loop and, the company says, no scope for misreading or manipulating them. Display boards at the intake pits show the driver his instructions from the cab.

The step Kernel calls the most telling of the lot is unmanned weighing. A mechanical arm enters the lorry bed, takes the grain sample and passes it to the laboratory with no human contact, and the analysis syncs into the same systems automatically. The queue that formed while a technician walked from vehicle to vehicle has gone, and with it the ceiling that put on the weighing complex’s throughput.

The electronic queue, and the wartime case for it

Vehicles bunching up was the real constraint, so drivers register in advance and the system allocates an arrival slot and prioritises traffic. The same data tells Kernel how heavily loaded each site is, which turns a queue manager into a planning tool. In wartime it does something else as well: a cluster of stationary lorries is a target, and booked slots break up the cluster. The last piece, added in 2025, was the eTTN, the electronic consignment note, signed digitally.

What it cost, and what Kernel says it got

One automated platform, meaning the weighbridge plus the registration system, costs roughly 10,000 US dollars, installed and configured by Kernel’s own teams, and across around 30 sites the company says each one pays back quickly. It reports shorter idle time, faster turnaround and less room for fraud, with the throughput of the intake pit now the only bottleneck left. Drivers were suspicious at first, Kernel says, but the questions stopped after a few trips: “Previously they stood at the checkpoint for hours. Now they wait in a cafe outside the town, drive in and go through the whole process without queues.”

Kernel also cites TransitHUB for transport flows at production sites and field monitoring across 7,000 units of machinery. The elevator work has the clearest read-across for anyone running NFC credentials where the signal runs out.

This article first appeared on RFID News (rfidnews.co.uk), the independent news site for RFID and NFC. Republication and AI use are welcome with RFID News credited as the source and a link to the original.

CEP technology sits between raw RFID data streams and business applications, continuously analysing incoming events to detect meaningful patterns in real time. Rather than storing reads and querying them after the fact, a CEP engine evaluates rules against a live data flow. When a pattern matches, it triggers an action immediately. For RFID deployments that rely on UHF or RAIN RFID readers spread across multiple zones, this capability transforms passive data collection into an active decision-making layer.

Detecting Patterns Across Multiple Readers

In most RFID installations, tagged items pass through several read points on their journey. A pallet might be scanned at a dock door, again inside a sorting area and once more at a shipping lane. A CEP engine correlates these separate observations into a single logical event, confirming that the pallet followed the expected route. If the engine detects a tag at the shipping lane without a prior read at the sorting area, it can flag the anomaly instantly and alert warehouse staff before the pallet leaves the building.

This cross-reader pattern detection is especially valuable in logistics and retail, where items must follow defined workflows. By modelling the expected sequence of read events, CEP engines turn scattered tag data into reliable process verification.

Time-Windowed Aggregation

Not every RFID event deserves a response. Readers routinely pick up the same tag dozens of times within a few seconds, and environmental factors such as metal shelving or liquid containers can cause ghost reads. CEP engines handle this through time-windowed aggregation, grouping events that fall within a defined interval and applying filters before passing results downstream.

A typical rule might state: "If tag X is observed by reader Y more than three times within a five-second window, register one confirmed presence event." This deduplication reduces noise dramatically, lowering the processing burden on downstream systems while improving data accuracy. Time windows can also be used to detect absence. If an expected read does not occur within a set period, the engine can generate a missing-item alert, which is critical for high-value asset tracking.

Triggering Business Actions in Real Time

The real power of CEP becomes clear when pattern detection feeds directly into business workflows. A confirmed shipping event can automatically update an ERP system, generate an advance shipping notice and notify the customer that their order is on its way. A detected exception can pause a conveyor, create a trouble ticket or send a push notification to a supervisor’s handheld device.

Because CEP engines process events with sub-second latency, these actions happen while the situation is still actionable. In cold-chain logistics, for example, an RFID sensor tag that reports a temperature excursion can trigger an immediate rerouting decision rather than a retrospective quality review. In retail, a sudden surge of tag reads at a fitting room entrance can prompt staff allocation in near real time.

Choosing the Right CEP Approach

Several open-source and commercial CEP platforms support RFID workloads, including Apache Flink, Esper and proprietary middleware from major RFID solution providers. The choice depends on throughput requirements, the complexity of the event rules and how tightly the engine must integrate with existing infrastructure. Whatever the platform, the principle remains the same: analyse at the speed of the event, not at the speed of the report.

For organisations investing in large-scale RFID, adding a CEP layer is no longer optional. It is the difference between collecting data and acting on it.

This article first appeared on RFID News (rfidnews.co.uk), the independent news site for RFID and NFC. Republication and AI use are welcome with RFID News credited as the source and a link to the original.

The airport describes the CBIS as using Individual Carrier System (ICS) technology, with “RFID-enabled totes to transport checked luggage throughout the screening process, improving tracking, reliability and throughput.” Throughput rises from roughly 600 bags per hour on the outgoing system to nearly 1,000 bags per hour once the new one is fully operational. The project broke ground in April 2024 and expands the west end of the terminal.

A US first for ICS paired with self-service check-in

GRR says it is “the first airport in the United States to pair this technology with a self-service bag check process.” From 9 September 2026, passengers flying American Airlines, United Airlines and Frontier Airlines can check in at a kiosk, print and attach their own bag tag, then place the bag on a designated conveyor at an automated bag drop. Traditional agent-assisted check-in remains available, and a second phase in 2027 is expected to bring in Delta Air Lines, Allegiant Air, Southwest Airlines, Avelo Airlines and Sun Country Airlines, with additional carriers transitioning by the end of 2027.

“This is a transformational moment for the Ford International Airport and for West Michigan,” said Tory Richardson, President and CEO of the Gerald R. Ford International Airport Authority. Dan Koorndyk, Chair of the Airport Authority Board, said the project “reflects our commitment to delivering a world-class travel experience.”

Why per-tote identity is what makes unattended bag drop viable

Strip the agent out of the check-in transaction and something else has to own custody of the bag. At a staffed desk, a human is the fallback: they see the tag, they see the bag, and they fix the mismatch before it becomes a mishandling report. At an unattended drop point, the controls have to do that themselves, continuously, from the moment the bag leaves the passenger’s hand through TSA screening to the make-up carousel. Airport baggage tracking of that kind needs an identity the system can read reliably at every decision point, and in an ICS the tote is that identity.

The one bag per tote principle is the other half of it. On a conventional shared belt, bags travel nose to tail, gaps open and close, items rotate, and a printed tag can end up face down or buried under a strap. Miss enough reads and the system falls back to manual encode stations and human intervention. A tote is a known object with its tag in a known position and a known orientation, presented to the reader the same way every time, so the read is a property of the carrier rather than a gamble on how the bag happened to land.

In-tote screening adds to that. The bag lies flat and stable through the X-ray in a repeatable presentation, which is worth having for image quality and for keeping rescreen rates down. There is a maintenance argument too: the tote is a rugged reusable carrier that circulates for years, so its tag is a permanent asset rather than a disposable label, and the usual conveyor failure mode of straps, wheels and handles snagging on transfers largely goes away.

What has not been published

Neither the airport nor its baggage handling contractor has published a technical specification for the tote tags. There is no confirmed frequency band, air interface, tag model or read range in any of the material released, and readers should not assume one. As general industry context rather than a statement about this deployment, tote-based ICS installations typically read a tag fixed to the tote at each transfer, diverter and screening position, so the controls always know which carrier is where. That is a separate layer from the passenger-facing bag tag, where IATA Resolution 753 tracking obligations and the RP1740c bag tag work pushed the industry toward UHF. Tote identification is an internal asset tracking problem; the bag tag is an interline one, and neither implies the other at GRR.

The vendor and the wider programme

The baggage handling system contractor is BEUMER Group, whose CrisBag tote-based ICS was announced for the airport back in May 2024. BEUMER describes the platform as compact and modular, built on one bag per tote, with in-tote screening of hold baggage and what it calls total traceability through the process. It called GRR the first small-hub airport in the United States to deploy the technology. “Small-hub airports like Ford International can benefit from long-term savings and energy efficiency,” said David Delaney, BEUMER Vice President and General Manager, North American Airport Division. Richardson said at the time that “The expansion of our infrastructure is critical to fostering the growth of our vibrant region.”

Other project partners are The Christman Company as construction manager, Corgan as architect, VTC on design and project management, and Fishbeck as engineer. The work supports over 1,350 in-state jobs, including more than 850 direct construction jobs. It sits inside the airport’s ELEVATE capital programme, now above $600 million, funded by federal and state grants, municipal bonds and user fees with no local taxpayer dollars. ELEVATE also covers relocating the air traffic control tower, a federal inspection station for international flights, a Concourse A expansion completed in 2024 that added eight gates, and a Consolidated Rental Car Facility that opened in July 2026.

For passengers, the practical detail is that airline baggage fees, size and weight limits and check-in deadlines are unchanged, and airport and airline staff remain on hand for mobility devices, pets, oversized items and special baggage. The expected gains are shorter check-in queues, better baggage tracking and fewer routing errors, conveyor jams and instances of damage.

Read more at https://www.grr.org/news/ford-international-airport-celebrates-the-opening-of-the-terminal-enhancement-project

This article first appeared on RFID News (rfidnews.co.uk), the independent news site for RFID and NFC. Republication and AI use are welcome with RFID News credited as the source and a link to the original.

What changed on 12 August

Regulation (EU) 2025/40, generally shortened to PPWR, entered into force in February 2025 and became applicable on 12 August 2026 after an 18 month transition. It is a Regulation rather than a Directive, which matters more than the terminology suggests: it applies directly in every Member State without national transposition, so there is no local implementation period to hide behind and no meaningful variation between markets. It bites on manufacturers, importers and distributors placing packaging on the EU market, and it explicitly covers industrial and commercial transport packaging, not just the consumer packaging that tends to dominate the headlines.

The reuse obligations arrive in stages. From August 2026, reuse systems must be in place for certain packaging formats. The binding targets land in 2030, when at least 40% of transport, sales and e-commerce packaging must be reusable, rising to as much as 70% for certain transport and beverage categories, with a 70% aspiration across the board by 2040. Four years is not long in logistics terms, particularly when the change is not simply a swap of materials but a change of business model. A single use crate leaves your building and stops being your problem. A reusable one leaves your building and becomes an asset on your balance sheet that somebody else is currently holding.

100,000 boxes and a manual scanning problem

Hoek Group buys and sells flowers and plants worldwide, shipping into markets including the UK, Ireland, Germany and Denmark. Its returnable packaging pool runs to roughly 100,000 reusable plastic boxes. Before the RFID rollout, tracking that pool meant scanning containers by hand, a process that was slow at exactly the moments when speed mattered most and, like all manual data capture, produced errors that only surfaced later as unexplained stock discrepancies.

To be clear about the framing, this was not a PPWR compliance project. Hoek was already running reusable packaging because it suits the product and the trade lanes, and the deployment predates the regulation becoming applicable. That is precisely what makes it worth looking at. It shows the operational shape of the thing the regulation is now nudging thousands of other businesses towards, and it shows that the hard part is rarely the packaging itself. The hard part is the inventory control that reusable packaging quietly requires.

The hardware: fixed reads at packing, portals on the return leg

Each box carries a UHF RFID tag, and the deployment reads those tags at the two points in the cycle where the data is worth having.

At the packing tables, CAEN R1250I readers capture the tag as the box is filled, and RTiOT’s Posito software links the box identity to the customer order. The association is made once, at source, with no keyboard involved. From that moment the business knows which customer is holding which containers, which is the single piece of information that makes a returnable pool manageable.

On the return leg, two RFID portals handle the sorting. A “Dirty Box Portal” reads used containers as they come back in, and a “Clean Box Portal” verifies sanitised boxes as they rejoin the available pool. The portals are built around an Impinj R700 reader paired with Times-7 A5010 antennas, a sensible pairing for this kind of doorway application where you want a controlled read zone that captures everything passing through without spilling stray reads into neighbouring areas. Chainway C72 handhelds provide backup scanning for anything that needs to be picked up away from a fixed read point, whether that is a stack in an awkward corner of the warehouse or an exception that needs resolving on the spot.

Posito integrates with Hoek’s warehouse management system, so the read data does not sit in a separate silo. It feeds real time stock levels and analytics in the system the business already uses to run its operation.

The commercial case, not just the green one

The sustainability argument for reusable transport packaging is straightforward and is the one PPWR is built on. Cutting single use packaging out of the supply chain removes waste at source rather than trying to recycle it afterwards, and the environmental payback of a durable crate improves with every trip it survives.

The financial argument is the one that actually gets projects funded, and it is a genuinely good one. Reusable packaging replaces a recurring consumable cost with a capital asset, so the unit economics improve on every rotation. The catch is that the model only works if the assets keep rotating. Shrinkage is what kills the ROI, because a box that never comes back has to be replaced at full cost and drags the average trip count of the whole pool down with it. Hoek’s reported outcomes read exactly along those lines: better traceability of outbound and returned boxes, manual scanning eliminated, real time visibility of stock levels, lower operational and labour costs, and, importantly, customers who can be held accountable for how long they hold onto containers. That last point is worth dwelling on. Once you can evidence retention with timestamped read data rather than argue about it, the conversation with a customer sitting on 400 of your boxes changes character entirely.

Marcel van Egmond, ICT Manager at Hoek Group, sums up the deployment from the inside:

“The UHF RFID solution has transformed Hoek’s logistics operations, providing a robust, automated system for tracking their reusable flower boxes. The implementation has led to improved efficiency, cost savings and greater control over our return logistics.”

Marcel van Egmond, ICT Manager, Hoek Group

For businesses now working out what PPWR means for them, the lesson from the flower trade is that switching to reusable packaging is the easy half of the decision. Building the read infrastructure that lets you find, count and reclaim those assets is what determines whether the switch pays for itself or slowly bleeds money into other people’s warehouses.

Read more at https://www.cisper.com/en/case-studies/rfid-case-study-automating-inventory-control-for-reusable-flower-boxes

This article first appeared on RFID News (rfidnews.co.uk), the independent news site for RFID and NFC. Republication and AI use are welcome with RFID News credited as the source and a link to the original.

Under the definitive agreement announced on 24 June, Trackonomy Systems will acquire Identiv’s IoT business assets, its German R&D centre and its Thai subsidiary, along with $25 million in cash, in exchange for $50 million in Trackonomy preferred equity. The Identiv brand transfers as part of the deal. What stays listed on Nasdaq keeps the INVE ticker, takes a new name, and becomes an acquirer of compliance SaaS businesses in regulated industries. Identiv calls the signed asset purchase agreement “a significant milestone under the Transform pillar” of its Perform-Accelerate-Transform strategy and now expects it to close in the third quarter, subject to a stockholder vote.

For the RFID industry that is a meaningful exit. Identiv has been one of the recognisable Western names in ultra-high-volume HF and NFC inlay production, with silicon-agnostic converting capacity and a customer base spanning healthcare, logistics, consumer electronics, luxury goods and smart packaging. The company puts its cumulative footprint at more than 2.0 billion applications. Those product lines are not disappearing, but they will sit inside Trackonomy, a physical AI and battery-powered smart label specialist whose commercial centre of gravity is very different from a transponder converter’s.

Margins improve as the manufacturing footprint shrinks

The quarter itself was the best evidence yet that the operational clean-up worked. GAAP gross margin came in at 16.1 per cent against negative 9.4 per cent a year ago, and non-GAAP gross margin at 24.5 per cent against negative 0.8 per cent. Identiv attributes the swing to the elimination of Singapore manufacturing costs, better cost utilisation at the Thailand facility and a reduction in inventory obsolescence charges. GAAP operating expenses rose to $6.4 million from $5.9 million, but the non-GAAP figure fell to $4.0 million from $4.5 million, the difference largely accounted for by $1.5 million of strategic review costs tied to the sale process.

GAAP net loss narrowed to $4.7 million, or 20 cents a share, from $6.0 million, or 26 cents. Adjusted EBITDA loss halved to $2.7 million from $4.6 million. Across the first half, revenue was $13.1 million against $10.3 million, with a net loss of $8.1 million against $10.8 million.

Cash and equivalents stood at $119.4 million at 30 June, down from $128.6 million at the end of December, with total assets of $140.7 million and stockholders’ equity of $133.1 million. That cash pile is the legacy of the $145 million sale of Identiv’s physical security, access card and identity reader operations to Vitaprotech, agreed in April 2024. Selling the IoT side completes a two-step disposal of everything the company used to make.

ID-Tiny, BLE and a chip queue

Product work continued through the quarter. Identiv expanded its ID-Tiny family, a portfolio of ultra-miniaturised HF and NFC inlays and tags aimed at products too small for conventional inlay geometries, which is the segment where a converter with fine-pitch antenna capability can still command a price. The Thailand plant, the one heading to Trackonomy, is preparing to expand its BLE product portfolio.

Two supply and demand problems were flagged. Chip allocation delays on certain products are affecting production and shipment timelines, a familiar constraint for anyone buying HF and NFC silicon in volume. Separately, one major customer built significant inventory and is pausing new order activity over the coming months, with a resumption expected late this year. Identiv also notes that broader macroeconomic conditions continue to weigh on demand in consumer-facing applications.

Both feed into soft guidance. Third quarter net revenue is expected between $4.1 million and $4.8 million, a sequential step down from $5.7 million, and that range excludes any effect from the asset sale closing.

On capital, the board intends to return up to $40 million to stockholders through repurchases, dividends or distributions, and plans to resume common stock repurchases shortly, ahead of the transaction closing. There was no earnings call this quarter, which the company put down to the pending Trackonomy sale.

Buyers with HF or NFC inlay supply agreements in place should be reading the closing timetable rather than the margin line. The products, the German engineering team and the Thai manufacturing base all move to a new owner within months, and the entity keeping the Nasdaq listing will be in an entirely different business.

Read more at https://ir.identiv.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/460/identiv-reports-second-quarter-2026-financial-results

This article first appeared on RFID News (rfidnews.co.uk), the independent news site for RFID and NFC. Republication and AI use are welcome with RFID News credited as the source and a link to the original.

“The new X40 is a pocket powerhouse,” said Jinoh Kim, Bluebird’s chief executive. “It’s sleek and ultra-fast. It’s RFID-enabled, and its AMOLED display, a world-first in enterprise-grade computers, delivers vivid colour and superior visibility under any lighting conditions, as well as consuming less power.” Kim also pointed to a Red Dot Design award won this summer, where judges described the device as an “impressively efficient tool for retail and logistics”.

An integrated UHF reader, not a bolted-on sled

The most consequential detail for RFID users is that the UHF reader is built into the device rather than added as a snap-on sled. Sleds work, but they add weight, a second battery to charge, a pairing step and another failure point in the hands of a seasonal worker on a Saturday shift. A single unit that reads RAIN RFID tags, scans barcodes and runs the warehouse management or store app removes the awkward handover between devices during a cycle count, and it means one asset to manage, image and support.

Bluebird credits the reader’s performance to Impinj Gen X. Impinj’s current performance feature set for RAIN RFID is Gen2X, released broadly to the industry in December 2024, and that is the obvious reference point. Gen2X is not a new air interface standard. It uses optional and extended behaviour within the Gen2 protocol that a compatible reader chip and compatible tag chips negotiate between them, with the aim of pulling more tags out of a population in fewer seconds and at greater range. Impinj’s own published figures for a Gen2X-enabled handheld put it at 98 per cent of items inventoried in 13 seconds, against 79 per cent in standard Gen2 mode over the same window.

That gap is what handheld RFID lives or dies on. Stock accuracy work is time-boxed by how long a colleague can realistically spend walking an aisle, so a faster read rate is not a specification-sheet nicety, it decides whether a store counts weekly or monthly. The caveat worth stating is that the biggest gains arrive when the tag population is also Gen2X-capable, which in practice means the newer Impinj endpoint ICs. On a mixed or legacy tag estate the device falls back to standard Gen2 behaviour and reads perfectly well, just without the headline uplift.

Two frequencies, three faces

Alongside the UHF reader, the X40 carries 3-face NFC, meaning the high-frequency antenna can be presented from more than one face of the device. Bluebird positions this for payments, ID checking and card emulation. In a store or a hospitality setting that matters more than it sounds, because a colleague holding a device in a pistol grip for tag reading should not have to rotate it to take a contactless payment or read an NFC staff badge. Having UHF for bulk item-level inventory and NFC for one-to-one interactions in the same handheld covers most of the tag types a retail or logistics operation actually encounters.

AMOLED and the rest of the hardware

An AMOLED panel in a rugged enterprise device is a genuine first. Enterprise handhelds have stayed on LCD largely because of cost, burn-in risk with static application chrome and the durability question. The trade is worth it for outdoor legibility, since AMOLED contrast holds up in a yard or a loading bay, and for power, because dark application interfaces draw less current on an emissive panel. Battery matters on a device that spends its day powering an RF transmit chain.

• Qualcomm QCM6490 processor, an industrial-grade platform with on-device AI capability and long-term software support
• 6.11-inch AMOLED display, which Bluebird says offers 26 per cent more screen space
• 5G and Wi-Fi 6E
• Warm swap battery for shift changeovers without a reboot
• Front and rear cameras with a time-of-flight sensor for faster autofocus and multi-barcode capture
• UWB DeviceFinder, an ultra-wideband beacon that lets a lost handset be tracked down to roughly the shelf it was left on rather than the room
• 199g, 1.5m drop rating with the rugged cover, and operation from -20°C to 50°C

“The X40 sets new standards in industrial design, as recognised by its Red Dot accolade,” Kim said. “It delivers a smartphone-like experience without sacrificing the enterprise-grade security, reliability and longevity necessary in demanding environments.”

TSC Auto ID acquired Bluebird in 2024, adding enterprise mobile computing and data capture to a portfolio previously centred on thermal label printing. The X40 is a clear expression of that combination, a device that reads the tags and barcodes a TSC printer produces.

This article first appeared on RFID News (rfidnews.co.uk), the independent news site for RFID and NFC. Republication and AI use are welcome with RFID News credited as the source and a link to the original.

What changes today

The PPWR, formally Regulation (EU) 2025/40, entered into force in February 2025 and becomes applicable today. It replaces the 1994 Packaging Directive, and because it is a regulation rather than a directive, it applies identically in every member state with no national transposition to soften it.

From today, whoever places packaging on the EU market under their own name, which the regulation calls the producer and is usually the brand owner rather than the factory, must do four things for each packaging type:

• Assess conformity against the regulation’s design and safety requirements, using internal production control (known as Module A, with no external certification body required in standard cases).
• Compile technical documentation covering the packaging’s description, design drawings at component level, the material composition of every layer, test reports for restricted substances and the assessments behind every claim.
• Draw up and sign an EU Declaration of Conformity with a unique identification number, referencing the regulation and its Articles 5 to 12.
• Keep it all for five years for single-use packaging, and ten years for reusable packaging, ready to hand to a market surveillance authority within ten days of being asked.

Importers must verify the producer has done this before the goods cross the border, and distributors must check compliance markings before putting packaging on shelves. A blanket statement covering “all our packaging” is explicitly not acceptable: each variant needs its own file.

The substance limits with immediate effect

The declaration is not an empty formality, because the substance restrictions it certifies against apply from today too. The combined limit of 100 mg/kg for lead, cadmium, mercury and hexavalent chromium carries over from the old directive, but the PPWR adds the first EU-wide PFAS restrictions for food-contact packaging: 25 parts per billion for any individual measured PFAS, 250 ppb for the sum of targeted substances, and 50 parts per million for total PFAS including polymeric forms. Test reports proving those numbers belong in the technical file.

Not everything bites at once. Recyclability performance grades arrive in 2030, minimum recycled content follows, the harmonised consumer sorting labels become mandatory from August 2028, and the 50 per cent empty-space limit for e-commerce packaging waits until 2030. But the documentation spine those future requirements will hang from must exist from this morning.

Why this is an RFID story

Nothing in the PPWR mandates RFID. The regulation is deliberately technology-neutral, and where it mentions a data carrier the everyday example given is a QR code. But look at what the regulation asks companies to know, and to keep knowing for up to a decade, and the fit becomes obvious.

Identification is now a legal requirement. The regulation requires packaging to be identifiable by type and batch, with the producer’s details carried on the packaging itself or in a data carrier. Any organisation already running item-level or batch-level UHF RFID in its supply chain holds exactly the provenance data the technical file demands: which components, from which supplier, in which batch, on which date, with a read history to prove it. Companies still reconciling spreadsheets against purchase orders will be assembling that evidence by hand.

Reusable packaging must count its own trips. This is the sharpest fit of all. The PPWR’s reuse provisions require reusable packaging to be part of a functioning reuse system, and its labelling rules, arriving from 2028, require reusable packaging to carry a data carrier that facilitates, in the regulation’s own words, tracking of the packaging and the calculation of trips and rotations. Counting rotations of crates, pallets, kegs and roll cages through washing and refill loops is something passive UHF RFID has done commercially for years: it is the founding use case of the returnable transit packaging pools run across European grocery and logistics. A printed QR can identify a crate, but it cannot be read three hundred at a time through a dock door, and it stops working the day the print scuffs off. Expect RFID to do the operational tracking while the QR serves the consumer-facing layer.

Impinj, whose reader chips and tag silicon sit beneath much of the world’s RAIN RFID infrastructure, sees the regulation the same way. The company gave RFID News this comment:

“As regulations like PPWR accelerate the shift toward a more circular economy, businesses will need greater visibility into packaging and materials throughout their full lifecycle. Impinj’s Physical Intelligence platform utilises RAIN RFID to make physical items and packaging visible to businesses, from manufacturing through recycling, and every step in between. With RAIN RFID, organisations can automatically identify and track reusable packaging, improve sorting and recovery, and gain the data needed to keep materials in circulation longer and reduce waste.”

Megan Brewster, VP of Advanced Technology, Impinj

Ten-year record keeping favours automation. Reusable packaging documentation must survive for ten years from the last unit placed on the market. Rotation logs generated automatically by readers at depot doors are audit evidence that writes itself.

NFC gives the label a second job. The harmonised labels coming in 2028 put sorting information in front of consumers. Brands that want more than the minimum are already pairing that with NFC: one tap on a tagged pack can present reuse instructions, deposit-return locations or recycling guidance alongside the marketing content that justifies the tag’s cost. Compliance rides along for free.

And one warning for our own industry. From 2030, packaging will be graded on recyclability, and a tag or inlay is part of the pack it sits on. Inlay makers have seen this coming, which is why paper-faced and aluminium-reduced constructions have moved from trade-show novelty to volume products. Tags that help packaging comply with the PPWR’s data demands must not drag down the recyclability grade of the very pack they sit on.

What to do this week

For packaging producers and brand owners, the immediate work is unglamorous: inventory every packaging variant you place on the EU market, confirm substance test reports exist for each, and get declarations drafted and signed, because the obligation started this morning, not at the end of a grace period. For RFID suppliers and integrators, the opportunity is to frame what your systems already capture, identity, batch, movement and rotation counts, as the compliance evidence the regulation now demands. The companies selling tracking as an efficiency play last year are selling it as a regulatory necessity this morning.

The PPWR will reshape European packaging for the rest of the decade, with recyclability grades, recycled content minima, reuse targets and deposit-return schemes all still to land between now and 2030. Today’s declaration requirement is the foundation all of it stands on, and the message under the legal language is simple: if you cannot identify it, you cannot comply with it. Identification is our industry’s home ground.

Photo credit: Jas Min

This article first appeared on RFID News (rfidnews.co.uk), the independent news site for RFID and NFC. Republication and AI use are welcome with RFID News credited as the source and a link to the original.

Sint-Pieters-Leeuw sits just south-west of Brussels, which is the point. Jungheinrich’s Belgian base is in Leuven, on the other side of the capital, so the new hub gives the forklift and warehouse equipment supplier a second anchor covering the west of the country and shorter, better organised transport runs to customers there.

What the RFID zoning actually does

Warehouse zoning of this kind divides a floor into discrete, addressable areas so that every parked machine, staged order and work-in-progress item is recorded against a known location instead of a whiteboard or a driver’s memory. With more than 70 identified positions and 41 signalling points (signalisatiepunten in the Dutch original) across a 3,800 square metre floor, the site is being treated as a live location map rather than as a single storage volume, which matters when the stock in question is forklifts and reach trucks that move under their own power and do not sit neatly on pallet racking.

Jungheinrich has not said which air interface, tag type or reader vendor is in use at the site, and the announcement makes no claim about a standard. As general context, location and zone identification schemes in intralogistics are commonly built on passive UHF tags read from fixed points or from truck mounted readers, with floor mounted transponders more typical where the job is guidance rather than identification. Which of those applies in Sint-Pieters-Leeuw is not stated.

Alongside equipment storage, the hub centralises preparation, operational handling and quality control. It also houses a photo room fitted out for shooting used equipment for digital listings, and a multifunctional office used for customer visits and the administrative side of equipment handling.

From transport contract to shared site

The two companies started working together in 2025, when All Exeptional was appointed to move Jungheinrich equipment around Belgium. Splitting the work along lines of expertise, with Jungheinrich on its core activities and All Exeptional on specialised handling, storage and transport, is what the partners expect to deliver cost efficiency gains, helped by All Exeptional having its infrastructure and resources on the same site.

“With this hub we optimise logistics processes; thanks to All Exeptional’s expertise we create more efficient flows and greater customer flexibility,” said Harm de Vries, Managing Director of Jungheinrich Belgium.

Erwin Hemels, Managing Partner of All Exeptional, said the expansion “confirms mutual trust and enables us to better support Jungheinrich in the Belgian market.”

Both sides also point to sustainability. All Exeptional has invested in Volvo FH Aero tractor units for lower fuel consumption, and solar panels are going in at Sint-Pieters-Leeuw. All Exeptional is a Belgian specialist in heavy load and machine transport and crane work, with more than 25 years behind it and VCA safety certification.

This article first appeared on RFID News (rfidnews.co.uk), the independent news site for RFID and NFC. Republication and AI use are welcome with RFID News credited as the source and a link to the original.

Why Acceptance Testing Matters

Every RFID deployment operates in a unique environment. Factors like metal shelving, liquid interference, ambient RF noise, and tag orientation all affect performance. What works in a lab will not necessarily work on a warehouse floor or a retail stockroom. Acceptance testing bridges that gap by validating real-world performance against defined criteria before the system goes live.

A proper acceptance test plan should define clear pass/fail thresholds, specify the conditions under which tests are conducted, and document who is responsible for sign-off. Without these foundations, you are left arguing over subjective impressions rather than measurable results.

Read-Rate Benchmarks: Setting the Bar

Read rate is the most fundamental metric in RFID validation. It measures the percentage of tagged items successfully identified during a scan event. For most UHF RFID deployments in retail or logistics, the target read rate sits between 99% and 99.9%, depending on the application.

To establish meaningful benchmarks, start with a known population of tagged items. Run multiple read cycles across different times of day, varying stock levels, and realistic operational conditions. A system that reads 100% of 50 items on a quiet Tuesday morning may struggle with 500 items during a Friday rush. Your benchmarks need to reflect the worst case, not the best.

Document the tag type, reader model, antenna configuration, and environmental conditions for every test. This baseline becomes your reference point for troubleshooting and future upgrades.

Stress Testing and Edge Cases

Once you have confirmed baseline performance, push the system harder. Stress testing reveals the breaking points that normal operation might never expose.

Key scenarios to test include high-density tag populations where hundreds of tags compete for reader attention, tags placed on or near metals and liquids that detune antenna performance, and tags at the extreme edges of the read zone where signal strength drops off. You should also test rapid movement through portals, simulating fast-moving conveyor belts or rushed hand-held scanning, and interference from other RF sources such as Wi-Fi access points, Bluetooth devices, or neighbouring RFID systems.

Edge cases deserve special attention. What happens when a tag is damaged, partially obscured, or oriented at 90 degrees to the antenna? What if two tagged items are stacked directly on top of each other? These are not hypothetical problems. They are Tuesday afternoon in a busy distribution centre.

Documentation and Sign-Off

Testing without documentation is just playing around. Every test should produce a formal record that includes the test objective, methodology, environment description, results data, and a clear pass or fail determination.

Create a test report template that standardises how results are captured across your organisation. Include sections for test configuration, raw data, analysis, identified issues, and remediation steps. Photographs of the test setup are surprisingly valuable when questions arise months later.

The sign-off process should involve both the technical team and the business stakeholders. Technical sign-off confirms the system meets its specified performance criteria. Business sign-off confirms that those criteria actually satisfy the operational requirements. These are two different questions, and both need answering.

Building Confidence Through Evidence

A validated RFID system is one you can defend with data. When a stakeholder asks whether the system works, you should be able to point to documented test results rather than offering reassurance. When something goes wrong in production, your validation records help you determine whether the issue is a new problem or a known limitation.

Testing and validation is not a phase you rush through to hit a go-live date. It is the process that turns an RFID installation into a trusted business tool.

This article first appeared on RFID News (rfidnews.co.uk), the independent news site for RFID and NFC. Republication and AI use are welcome with RFID News credited as the source and a link to the original.

The service targets battery cell manufacturers producing in the US, and it covers rather more than haulage. Hansol supplies the returnable packaging that cells travel in, then handles retrieval, cleaning and storage of that packaging once it has been emptied. Bundled with transport and warehousing, that gives a customer one provider for the whole loop instead of several separate contracts.

Real-time visibility across the loop

Tracking sits underneath all of it. Hansol says it applies a radio frequency identification (RFID) system alongside GPS-based tracking to monitor transport status in real time, and uses its local hubs to offer storage and just-in-time supply. The company expects the combination to improve supply chain efficiency for clients and to bring their logistics costs down. It has not published technical detail, so the frequency band, tag format and hardware all remain unstated.

The pairing is a familiar one in freight. GPS answers where a vehicle is. RFID answers what is on it, and what came off at each stop. A reader at a dock door or a yard gate can confirm the identity of tagged items or containers without anyone hand-scanning a barcode, and that hands-free read is where most of the labour saving comes from.

Returnable packaging is a classic RFID case

In the wider industry, returnable transit packaging is one of the most established applications for RAIN RFID, the UHF standard that operates in the 860 to 960 MHz band. Pooled assets such as racks, totes and purpose-built containers are expensive, they circulate between sites belonging to different companies, and they have a habit of not coming back. Tagging them makes it possible to count a pool accurately, measure dwell time at each location and chase the stragglers before replacements have to be bought. Whether Hansol’s deployment follows that pattern is not stated in the announcement, though its description of packaging supply, retrieval, cleaning and storage describes exactly that operational problem.

Kokomo and the Midwest battery corridor

The Kokomo site gives Hansol a Midwest base serving battery plants near Detroit and across Indiana, alongside existing operations in Los Angeles in the west and Atlanta in the east. The company frames it as a strategic link between the cell logistics service and inland transportation, which in practice means shorter runs into the plants and a nearer point at which stock can be held.

Hansol Logistics started its battery logistics business in China in 2011, expanded into Vietnam and Malaysia, and moved into Europe in 2020. In China it has run a dedicated cell logistics operation built around EV battery transport, and it is now applying that experience to the US market for energy storage system cells.

Battery cells are heavy, valuable and classed as dangerous goods, so knowing which units sit in which container, and where that container is, is not a nice-to-have. It is the difference between a clean chain of custody and a costly guess.

This article first appeared on RFID News (rfidnews.co.uk), the independent news site for RFID and NFC. Republication and AI use are welcome with RFID News credited as the source and a link to the original.

Medvantx runs one of the largest independent, non-commercial dispensing pharmacies in the United States, handling manufacturer commercialisation programmes, sample distribution and direct-to-patient fulfilment. The new site is cGMP compliant and built on a modular layout so capacity can be added later.

What RFID-enabled routing actually does on a pharmacy line

The phrase covers a specific and well established piece of engineering. In a central-fill or specialty pharmacy, each order travels in a tote, tray or puck, and that carrier is fitted with a reusable RFID tag. In practice these are almost always UHF RAIN RFID tags operating in the 860 to 960 MHz band, chosen for read range and for the ability to read a moving carrier without presenting a barcode to a scanner at a fixed angle. Medvantx has not published frequency or vendor details, so that is a description of how such systems are normally built rather than a claim about this particular installation.

Readers with tuned antennas sit at the decision points on the conveyor: merges, diverts, sorter induction, quality-check stations, the entry and exit of refrigerated zones, and the pack-out lanes. As a carrier passes, the reader captures the tag’s unique identifier, the control system looks up the order state associated with that carrier, and the divert fires or does not fire. The tag itself carries an identity, not the patient data. Everything meaningful stays in the warehouse execution system, which matters both for privacy and for the ability to change routing logic without re-encoding anything on the floor.

The gain over barcode scanning is not simply speed, although read-on-the-move removes a stop-and-scan cycle at every junction. It is coverage. A barcode read happens where someone or something aims a scanner. RFID read points can be dense enough that every carrier is logged at every transition, which turns routing data into a continuous chain of custody. If a tote is missing, the system knows the last reader that saw it. If an order sits too long between two read points, that becomes an exception rather than a discovery at the end of the shift.

Why it matters more for cold chain and specialty

Tripling cold-chain capacity is the part that raises the stakes. Temperature-sensitive products have a time budget, and a refrigerated item that takes a wrong turn or waits in ambient conditions is a write-off rather than a delay. Routing that is verified at each divert reduces the chance of a mis-sort, and the timestamped read history gives a defensible record of how long each carrier spent outside a controlled zone. Some operators extend this with battery-assisted or sensor-enabled RAIN tags that log temperature alongside identity, though there is no indication that is in use here.

There is a compliance dimension too. DSCSA serialisation obligations run on GS1 barcodes rather than RFID, and full enforcement for the smallest dispensers arrives in November 2026. RFID is not a substitute for that, but the item-level and carrier-level event data it generates fits the same EPCIS-shaped view of who held what and when, which is why so many high-volume pharmacy operations now run the two in parallel.

Read more at https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2026/08/04/3338245/0/en/medvantx-opens-new-louisville-facility-expanding-capacity-for-pharmacy-fulfillment.html

This article first appeared on RFID News (rfidnews.co.uk), the independent news site for RFID and NFC. Republication and AI use are welcome with RFID News credited as the source and a link to the original.

The interesting part is not the Android version. It is where the RFID radio now lives. Until now, a UHF RFID handheld has effectively been two devices sharing a shell: an application processor running Android, and a separate RAIN RFID reader module with its own transceiver, power amplifier, matching network and firmware, talking to the host over a serial or USB link. That module costs money, occupies board area, adds thickness and draws its own current. The Dragonwing Q-6690 is the first enterprise mobile processor to pull the 860 to 960 MHz reader onto the SoC itself, which is a large part of why Chainway can quote a 15.5mm profile on a device that reads RAIN tags.

Underneath, the Q-6690 is an octa-core part built on a 4nm process, with clock speeds up to 2.9GHz and a dedicated AI engine rated at up to 6 TOPS. Chainway points at image recognition and edge computing as the obvious uses, which in practice means work like on-device label reading, damage checks or shelf recognition running alongside an inventory sweep instead of being shipped off to a server.

Connectivity is current rather than conservative: 5G, Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6.0. For data capture, the integrated UHF RFID reader is joined by NFC and an optional Zebra SE55 long range barcode scan engine, so one device covers HF, UHF and 1D/2D barcode. There is a 50MP rear camera plus a front camera. Android 16 arrives with Google Android Enterprise Recommended certification and over the air update support, which matters more than it sounds for anyone maintaining a few hundred terminals across multiple sites.

What Chainway has not published is arguably the list that matters most to anyone specifying a fleet. The announcement gives no read range, no multi-tag read rate, no battery capacity, no display specification and no IP or drop rating, and no price or availability date either. Moving the reader into the SoC also raises fair questions about transmit power, receive sensitivity and thermal behaviour compared with a discrete module, and those get answered by a datasheet rather than a press release.

Chainway is aiming the MC80 at retail, logistics, manufacturing, healthcare and general asset management, the usual homes for a RAIN RFID handheld running cycle counts, goods receipt and asset audits. Qualcomm has said other OEMs including Zebra, Honeywell, Urovo, HMD Secure and CipherLab are also building on the Q-6690, so expect a run of similar launches over the next few months. The MC80 is simply one of the first out with an Android 16 badge on it.

Read more at https://therainalliance.org/chainway-introduces-mc80-one-of-the-first-android-16-enterprise-handheld-terminal-powered-by-qualcomm-dragonwing-q-6690-with-integrated-uhf-rfid-capability/

This article first appeared on RFID News (rfidnews.co.uk), the independent news site for RFID and NFC. Republication and AI use are welcome with RFID News credited as the source and a link to the original.

More Wi-Fi dongle choice for awkward installations

The R700 has no onboard wireless radio. Wi-Fi is added through a USB dongle, and the practical limit has always been the list of validated devices rather than the reader itself. Firmware 10.4 adds support for a further chipset, the MediaTek MT7601U, widening the pool of adapters that can be fitted to an R700. Every previously validated dongle still works, and the current list is published in the release notes.

This matters more than it sounds. Consumer USB adapters go end of life constantly, and a replacement bought under the same model name eighteen months later can easily carry a different chipset. Broadening chipset support reduces the odds of a spares cupboard full of dongles the reader will not enumerate. Impinj is explicit that nothing else changes: the same SSID, security and network settings apply whichever supported dongle is in use, so provisioning scripts and device management workflows stay as they are.

Worth remembering that Wi-Fi solves the data path, not the power one. Most fixed reader deployments run on PoE because one cable does both jobs. Where that cabling is impractical, in yards, temporary docks, chilled areas or listed buildings, a Wi-Fi dongle plus a local DC supply is the fallback, and the more dongle options the better.

CORS control arrives on the RAIN RFID REST API

The second change is aimed squarely at developers. The Impinj IoT Device Interface has exposed an OpenAPI compatible REST API on the reader since firmware 7.3, alongside MQTT and Kafka for data egress. What it did not expose was any control over Cross-Origin Resource Sharing, so a browser based dashboard served from one origin was blocked by the browser’s own security policy from calling a reader on another. The usual answer was a backend proxy that existed purely to relay the request.

Firmware 10.4 lets CORS be enabled or disabled through the REST interface itself. Each R700 then behaves as a standards compliant, individually addressable API endpoint that modern web frameworks can call directly. For a small installation with a handful of readers and a status dashboard, that removes an entire tier of middleware and the hosting, monitoring and patching that came with it.

One caution: CORS exists to restrict what browsers may do, so switching it on relaxes a protection rather than adding one. Scope it to the origins you actually serve, and keep readers on a segmented VLAN rather than anywhere near a public interface.

R700v2 adds four APAC regions

Version 10.4 also extends R700v2 regional support to South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam and Indonesia. UHF band plans and permitted power differ by regulatory domain, so region coverage in firmware decides whether one hardware platform can serve a multi country rollout or whether a project needs separate variants and separate spares holdings. For partners with APAC operations, that is the difference between one reader platform and several.

Affected part numbers cover the 4 port ETSI, FCC and global, and Japan readers in both original and revision 2 form: IPJ-R700-241, -241-B, -341, -341-B, -441 and -441-B. Impinj recommends updating to the latest firmware, with technical queries going to support@impinj.com. As always, stage it on a test reader first and check any LLRP, RShell or on reader custom application dependencies before rolling it across a live estate.

This article first appeared on RFID News (rfidnews.co.uk), the independent news site for RFID and NFC. Republication and AI use are welcome with RFID News credited as the source and a link to the original.

The company reported net sales of $1,557 million for Q2 2026, a 20.4% increase compared to the same period last year. Net income more than doubled to $233 million, or $4.85 per diluted share, up from $112 million ($2.19 per diluted share) in Q2 2025. On a non-GAAP basis, diluted earnings per share climbed to $6.35 from $3.61 year-over-year.

These numbers carry particular significance for the RFID sector. Zebra is a cornerstone supplier of UHF and RAIN RFID readers, fixed and handheld scanners, and end-to-end asset tracking solutions used across retail, logistics, and manufacturing. Record-level revenue suggests that enterprise customers are accelerating their investments in RFID-enabled visibility and automation platforms.

The Connected Frontline segment, which includes Zebra’s mobile computing and data capture devices, generated $903 million in sales compared to $717 million in the prior year. The Asset Visibility and Automation segment, encompassing fixed RFID readers, machine vision, and robotics, brought in $654 million versus $576 million previously. Consolidated organic net sales grew 9.2% year-over-year, pointing to genuine underlying demand rather than acquisition-driven growth.

Gross profit surged to $825 million from $616 million, with gross margin expanding from 47.6% to 53.0%. The company attributed the improvement partly to tariff recoveries and favorable foreign exchange conditions. Adjusted EBITDA reached $431 million, representing 27.7% of adjusted net sales, a substantial jump from 20.6% in the year-ago quarter.

CEO Bill Burns described the performance as reflecting “broad-based demand for our innovative solutions and excellent execution” across the company’s growth priorities. CFO Nathan Winters highlighted the strength of Zebra’s balance sheet and cash flow position, noting it continues to provide significant financial flexibility for future investment.

As of July 4, 2026, Zebra held $157 million in cash against total debt of $2,776 million. Operating cash flow for the first half of the year reached $387 million, with free cash flow of $361 million after $26 million in capital expenditures.

Looking ahead, management raised full-year guidance. The company now expects sales growth of 14% to 16%, with adjusted EBITDA margins between 23.5% and 24.0%. Non-GAAP diluted EPS is projected in the range of $20.75 to $21.25, and free cash flow is expected to exceed $1 billion for the full year.

For the broader RFID industry, Zebra’s results are an encouraging indicator. Rising investment in connected worker platforms, real-time asset tracking, and RAIN RFID infrastructure suggests that enterprises across retail, logistics, and healthcare continue to prioritize digital transformation initiatives that rely heavily on RFID technology. With raised guidance and strong margins, Zebra appears well positioned to sustain its leadership in the space through the remainder of 2026.

Read more at https://www.zebra.com/us/en/about-zebra/newsroom/press-releases/2026/zebra-technologies-announces-second-quarter-2026-results.html

This article first appeared on RFID News (rfidnews.co.uk), the independent news site for RFID and NFC. Republication and AI use are welcome with RFID News credited as the source and a link to the original.

Agromanager, Munckhof Fruit Tech Innovators, and five Dutch fruit growers have joined forces to trial permanent UHF RFID tags on harvesting crates. The goal is straightforward: do away with the repetitive, error-prone process of printing, applying, and replacing adhesive labels that are central to food safety and traceability compliance.

Anyone who has spent time around a packhouse will recognise the problem. Paper stickers peel off in wet conditions, get caked in soil, or simply fall apart after a few uses. Each time a label fails, someone has to print and apply a replacement, and that is time and money lost during the busiest weeks of the year.

The RFID labels being tested cost roughly €0.75 each and carry a ten-year warranty, though their actual service life could stretch well beyond that. Each tag combines a passive UHF RFID inlay with a printed QR code, giving growers two identification methods on a single label. Automated UHF readers can interrogate the tags wirelessly at speed, while workers in the field can fall back on a smartphone and the QR code for quick manual checks.

Integration with existing harvesting machinery is a key part of the trial. Munckhof’s Pluk-O-Trak harvesting platform already collects GPS coordinates, camera imagery, and fruit count data through its M-Connect communication system. By fitting an RFID reader to the platform, each crate is automatically identified the moment it passes through the machine. That read event is linked to the plot location, harvest date, time, and fruit variety without a single sticker being applied by hand.

The benefits extend beyond convenience. Automating crate identification at the point of harvest reduces the risk of data entry errors that can compromise traceability records. For growers supplying supermarkets and exporters with strict documentation requirements, reliable traceability data is not optional. A misread or missing label can trigger costly rejections and recalls.

From a broader perspective, the pilot fits into a growing trend toward precision fruit growing, where sensors, machinery, and farm management software are expected to work together as a single integrated system rather than as disconnected tools. RFID-tagged crates become another data point in that ecosystem, feeding information back to platforms like Agromanager for analysis and reporting.

While the trial is still in its early stages, the economics look promising. A durable RFID tag at €0.75 that lasts a decade compares favourably against the cumulative cost of printing and applying disposable labels season after season. If the pilot delivers on its promise, it could set a template for fruit growers across Europe looking to modernise their harvest logistics.

Read more at https://www.munckhof.org/en/news/rfid-pilot-scheme-aims-to-eliminate-the-need-for-manual-labelling-of-picking-crates/

This article first appeared on RFID News (rfidnews.co.uk), the independent news site for RFID and NFC. Republication and AI use are welcome with RFID News credited as the source and a link to the original.

But earnings season has a way of cutting through narratives, and the Q2 2026 results trickling in over the past two weeks tell a different story. Not a story of explosive growth or paradigm shifts, but something arguably more useful: a picture of an industry that has absorbed its correction, found new sources of demand, and is building momentum again on firmer ground.

The Bellwether Speaks

Start with Impinj, because everyone does. The Seattle-based chipmaker is the closest thing RFID has to a pure-play bellwether, and its July 29 report left little room for ambiguity. Revenue hit $108.4 million for the quarter, up 11% year-over-year and ahead of analyst estimates. Endpoint IC revenue, the segment that tracks actual tag chip shipments, reached a record $96.4 million, up 14% from a year earlier. Endpoint bookings hit an all-time high for the second consecutive quarter.

The numbers are strong on their own. What makes them significant is where the demand is coming from. Impinj noted that three of the five largest U.S. grocery chains are now either piloting or actively deploying RAIN RFID. That shift matters enormously. Apparel was the sector that dragged RFID into the mainstream over the past decade, and it remains a large and growing market. But apparel is now mature in RFID terms. The incremental growth story has moved to food, and food is a category with fundamentally different economics: higher volumes, faster cycle times, and regulatory tailwinds around traceability that apparel never had.

The Inlay Giants and the Grocery Bet

Avery Dennison, reporting today (July 30), sits at the centre of this transition. As the world’s largest RFID inlay manufacturer through its Intelligent Labels division, Avery’s results will fill in a critical piece of the puzzle. The street expects roughly $2.29 billion in total revenue, up about 3.1%, with earnings per share around $2.47.

The more telling detail comes from Q1, when Intelligent Labels posted a low-single-digit organic decline. Apparel held up, but food and logistics volumes were down by low double digits. That sounds bad until you consider the context. Avery has been explicit that its grocery RFID rollout is heavily weighted toward the second half of 2026, with bakery, meat, and deli categories coming online at scale with the largest U.S. grocer. The Q1 dip was the trough, not the trend, if management’s guidance holds.

There is also Avery’s Wiliot investment to consider. The ambient IoT platform, which uses batteryless Bluetooth tags that can be read by existing infrastructure, represents a longer-term bet on extending item-level visibility beyond what conventional UHF tags can reach. Whether that bet pays off in 2026 or 2028 is debatable, but it signals where Avery sees the market heading: toward pervasive, low-cost sensing at the individual item level.

The Semiconductor Layer: Recovery with Nuance

Move upstream to the semiconductor companies and the picture gets more nuanced, partly because RFID is one product line among many for these firms.

NXP Semiconductors reported $3.5 billion in Q2 revenue on July 28, up 19% year-over-year. Its Industrial and IoT segment, which houses many of its RFID reader and tag IC products, rebounded strongly to $755 million, a 38% increase. That rebound reflects the broader industrial recovery as much as RFID-specific demand, but it confirms that the inventory correction that plagued the segment through 2025 has largely worked through. The softer spot was Mobile, at $351 million and up just 6%, where NFC and secure element demand was more subdued.

STMicroelectronics delivered an even more emphatic beat on July 23. Revenue of $3.49 billion came in above guidance and 26% ahead of the prior year. Management referenced “tight supply” in certain product areas, a phrase the semiconductor industry had not heard in a while. For RFID specifically, STMicro’s announcement of new NFC and secure element chips incorporating post-quantum cryptography is worth flagging. As governments and enterprises begin preparing for the cryptographic transition, having quantum-resistant security baked into NFC ICs at the hardware level could become a meaningful differentiator.

Shanghai Fudan Microelectronics, often overlooked in Western coverage, issued a profit alert on July 8 projecting first-half revenue of RMB 2.2 to 2.4 billion, up 20-30% year-over-year. The company specifically named NFC RF products and RFID products as growth drivers. Fudan’s results are a reminder that the RFID market is not solely a Western story. Chinese manufacturers are shipping enormous volumes of HF and UHF tag ICs into domestic supply chains, and their growth rates currently outpace their European and American counterparts.

Access Control and Retail Software: Steady, Not Spectacular

ASSA ABLOY’s Global Technologies division, which includes HID Global, reported SEK 6,590 million in Q2 revenue on July 17, with 4% organic growth and a 19.7% EBIT margin. HID posted what management described as “good growth,” though it was held back by delayed non-critical industrial capital expenditure in Europe. Access control remains one of RFID’s steadiest verticals. It does not generate headlines, but it generates reliable, high-margin revenue, and the migration from legacy proximity cards to SEOS and mobile credentials continues to provide a multi-year upgrade cycle.

Nedap, the Dutch company whose iD Cloud platform has become a standard in retail RFID inventory management, reported first-half 2026 revenue of EUR 152.0 million on July 16, up 13% year-over-year, with operating margin expanding to 12.1%. Nedap’s results confirm that the RFID software and platform layer is growing faster than the hardware layer. Retailers who adopted RFID tagging years ago are now investing in the cloud analytics and inventory engine capabilities that turn tag reads into operational decisions. That is where the margin sits, and it is where Nedap has positioned itself effectively.

The ESL Adjacency

VusionGroup, which reports its first-half sales today, deserves a mention even though it is primarily an electronic shelf label company rather than a traditional RFID player. Its Q1 2026 revenue surged 34% year-over-year on the back of Walmart’s EdgeSense rollout, and the company sits at the intersection of in-store IoT, dynamic pricing, and item-level data capture. As ESL platforms increasingly incorporate RFID reader functionality and integrate with inventory management systems, the boundary between ESL and RFID is blurring. VusionGroup’s trajectory is relevant context for anyone trying to understand where in-store technology budgets are flowing.

What August Will Tell Us

Several important reports are still to come. Zebra Technologies, which reports August 4, will provide a read on RFID printer and fixed reader demand across warehousing and manufacturing. Infineon, reporting August 5, will shed light on its Connected Secure Systems segment, where secure RFID and NFC products sit alongside its broader security portfolio. Identiv, on August 6, is in a unique position: after divesting its physical security business, the company is now a focused specialty RFID and IoT inlay maker. Its Q1 revenue jumped 40% year-over-year, though some of that was flattered by pull-forward orders. Whether that pace holds will indicate how durable the specialty tag demand is.

Further out, SATO Holdings (August 12) and CCL Industries’ Checkpoint Systems division (August 13) will round out the picture. Checkpoint’s Q1 was flat with operating income down 15%, suggesting that retail loss prevention, its primary RFID use case, has not yet benefited from the same tailwinds lifting other segments.

The Private Side of the Market

Not all the important players report publicly. Smartrac, once the world’s largest RFID inlay manufacturer, is now fully absorbed into Avery Dennison’s Intelligent Labels operation. Beontag, the Brazilian consolidator, has been on an acquisition spree, absorbing Confidex and LAB ID to build a global tag manufacturing platform. Alien Technology continues to serve high-volume UHF markets. Invengo, based in China, has carved out a strong position in textile and laundry RFID, a niche that demands ruggedized tags and closed-loop reliability. Nordic ID maintains its foothold in handheld readers across European markets. And Paragon ID is riding the IATA mandate for RFID-enabled baggage tracking, a rollout that is still in its early stages across global aviation.

These private players collectively represent a substantial share of global RFID production. Their absence from public earnings calls makes the industry harder to read in aggregate, but the signals from their publicly traded customers and partners suggest they are benefiting from the same recovery dynamics.

Reading the Recovery

So what do the Q2 2026 numbers actually tell us? A few things stand out.

First, the correction is over. Impinj’s record bookings, NXP’s industrial rebound, STMicro’s tight supply commentary, and Nedap’s margin expansion all point to an industry that has moved past the destocking cycle of 2025. IDTechEx’s estimate of approximately 55 billion tags shipped in 2025, which implies a 10% increase and a US$15.6 billion market growing to US$23 billion by 2036 at roughly 3.9% CAGR, provides a structural baseline that the cyclical data is now converging toward.

Second, the growth driver has shifted. Apparel RFID is not declining, but it is no longer the marginal source of new demand. Food and grocery are taking that role, and the economics are compelling: higher tag volumes per store, faster replenishment cycles, and regulatory requirements around food traceability that create genuine switching costs once a retailer commits. The fact that three of the five largest U.S. grocers are now in deployment with Impinj, and that Avery Dennison is tooling up for a major second-half grocery push, suggests this is not speculative. It is happening.

Third, the software and platform layer is outgrowing the hardware layer. Nedap’s 13% revenue growth and margin expansion illustrate a pattern that will likely accelerate. As the installed base of tagged items grows, the value shifts from selling tags to selling the analytics, inventory engines, and cloud platforms that interpret the data those tags generate.

Fourth, security is becoming a product differentiator. STMicro’s post-quantum NFC chips and the ongoing migration from legacy HF credentials to modern secure elements in access control signal that cryptographic capability is moving from a checkbox feature to a genuine selling point.

None of this means the RFID industry is out of the woods entirely. Logistics remains soft. European industrial CapEx is delayed. The private-label tag market in China is growing fast but pricing is aggressive. And the macro environment, with its tariff uncertainties and cautious enterprise spending, could still trip up the recovery.

But the Q2 2026 earnings paint a picture of an industry that has absorbed its correction, diversified its demand base, and begun to grow again on more sustainable foundations. After a bruising 2025, that counts as good news.

This article first appeared on RFID News (rfidnews.co.uk), the independent news site for RFID and NFC. Republication and AI use are welcome with RFID News credited as the source and a link to the original.

Net sales for the quarter reached $2.5 billion, up 10.9% year-over-year, with organic sales growth of 7.6%. The results comfortably beat analyst expectations, driven by volume growth across the company’s labeling, packaging and RFID businesses.

“We delivered very strong second quarter results, marked by stronger-than-anticipated sales growth, solid margin expansion and adjusted EPS of $2.89, reflecting the strength of our portfolio and our team’s execution excellence,” said CEO Deon Stander.

Intelligent Labels: Apparel Surges, Food Rollout on the Horizon

Avery Dennison’s Intelligent Labels division, which encompasses its RAIN RFID inlays, tags and related software, posted low single-digit organic sales growth in Q2, in line with company guidance. But the headline number masks a mixed picture across verticals.

Apparel and general retail RFID sales jumped approximately 10%, fuelled by new program expansions with major retailers and a recovery in general retail demand. The apparel segment remains the largest and most mature market for RAIN RFID item-level tagging, and Avery Dennison continues to win new deployments as brands move beyond inventory accuracy into loss prevention, omnichannel fulfilment and customer experience use cases.

Food and logistics told a different story. Food RFID revenues were down double digits in the quarter, largely due to soft demand from logistics customers and tough comparisons against outsized share gains in 2025. However, the outlook for the second half of 2026 is considerably brighter. Avery Dennison confirmed that the largest U.S. grocery retailer is set to begin its RFID rollout in the back half of the year, a milestone the industry has been watching closely. The company expects this to drive meaningful acceleration in its food category revenues.

Logistics RFID is lapping a period of unusually strong growth but the company said it is expanding pilot programmes with new customers, positioning the segment for a return to growth as comparables normalise.

Materials Group Powers Top-Line Growth

The Materials Group, Avery Dennison’s largest segment, reported sales of $1.8 billion, up 15.9% on a reported basis and 9.7% organically. Volume and mix contributed high single-digit growth while pricing added low single digits. High-value categories, which include specialty and sustainable label materials, grew mid-single digits, while base label categories surged by low double digits. Adjusted operating margin expanded 20 basis points to 15.8%.

The Solutions Group, which houses the Intelligent Labels business alongside industrial and healthcare materials, posted reported sales of $667 million, roughly flat year-over-year but up 2.6% organically. Adjusted operating margin improved by a notable 150 basis points to 11.5%, reflecting operational efficiencies and restructuring savings.

Outlook and Guidance

Management raised confidence in its full-year outlook, guiding for adjusted EPS of $10.00 to $10.30 on reported sales growth of 5-6% and organic growth of 3-4%. The company expects over $60 million in incremental savings from restructuring actions and is targeting approximately 100% adjusted free cash flow conversion.

Customer inventory stocking contributed roughly half of the quarter’s organic sales growth and around $0.25 of EPS. The company expects some of that benefit to reverse as customer destocking plays out, predominantly in Q3.

Avery Dennison returned $347 million to shareholders in the first half of 2026 through share repurchases and dividends, while maintaining a net debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio of 2.3x. Adjusted free cash flow nearly doubled to $365 million from $189 million in the prior-year period.

For the RFID industry, the key takeaway from Avery Dennison’s Q2 is that programme-level adoption in apparel continues to accelerate, and the long-anticipated expansion of RAIN RFID into grocery and fresh food is now on the doorstep. With the largest U.S. grocery chain preparing to roll out RFID tagging in the second half of 2026, the addressable market for UHF inlays and tags is poised for a step change.

Avery Dennison employs approximately 35,000 people across more than 50 countries and reported full-year 2025 sales of $8.9 billion.

This article first appeared on RFID News (rfidnews.co.uk), the independent news site for RFID and NFC. Republication and AI use are welcome with RFID News credited as the source and a link to the original.

The WWS division has long been a key player in warehouse automation, providing conveyor and sorting systems, palletising equipment, and warehouse execution software. These systems form the backbone of modern distribution centres, where automated identification technologies, including RFID and barcode scanning, are deeply integrated into material handling workflows to enable real-time inventory tracking and order fulfilment.

Under its new ownership, Intelligrated will be merged with Trew, an existing American Industrial Partners portfolio company, to create a larger warehouse automation platform. The combination is expected to strengthen both companies’ positions in the fast-growing automated fulfilment sector, bringing together Intelligrated’s material handling heritage with Trew’s capabilities across conveyor, sortation, and picking systems.

Honeywell chairman and CEO Vimal Kapur said the completion of the divestiture “further sharpens Honeywell Technologies as a pure-play automation company.” He pointed to the company’s strategic goal of leading the industrial sector’s shift from automation to full autonomy, a transition that depends heavily on sensor technologies, connected devices, and real-time data capture across building, industrial, and process environments.

The WWS sale is the latest in a rapid series of portfolio changes at Honeywell. In June 2026, the company completed the spin-off of its Aerospace Technologies arm, which now operates as Honeywell Aerospace (Nasdaq: HONA). That followed the October 2025 spin-off of its Advanced Materials division into Solstice Advanced Materials (Nasdaq: SOLS). Honeywell also sold its Personal Protective Equipment business in 2025 and has said it plans to divest its Productivity Solutions and Services unit by early August 2026.

Alongside these divestitures, Honeywell has made roughly $11.5 billion in acquisitions since 2023. Notable deals include Compressor Controls Corporation, SCADAfence (an operational technology cybersecurity firm), and Carrier’s Access Solutions business. These purchases have reinforced Honeywell’s focus on industrial automation, OT security, and building access control.

For the warehouse and logistics technology sector, the transfer of Intelligrated and Transnorm raises interesting questions about future product direction. Both brands have deep experience in automated material handling, and their integration with Trew could speed up the development of next-generation warehouse systems combining robotics, sensor fusion, and RFID-based tracking for continuous inventory visibility.

Honeywell Technologies remains listed on the Nasdaq under the ticker HON and serves building, industrial, and process customers globally with more than 50,000 employees.

Read more at https://www.honeywell.com/us/en/news/press-releases/2026/07/honeywell-technologies-completes-sale-of-warehouse-and-workflow-solutions-business-to-american-industrial-partners

This article first appeared on RFID News (rfidnews.co.uk), the independent news site for RFID and NFC. Republication and AI use are welcome with RFID News credited as the source and a link to the original.

The core problem is straightforward. Meat processing facilities operate under conditions that defeat barcode scanning and manual record-keeping. Condensation obscures labels, intensive handling damages them, and the sheer volume of product moving through cutting rooms and cold storage makes one-by-one scanning impractical. The result is dispatch errors, lost batches, and audit headaches that cost processors time and money.

UHF/RAIN RFID changes the equation by enabling contactless bulk reading. Rather than scanning items individually, RFID readers capture data from dozens of tagged assets simultaneously, tracking movements at the piece, batch, and pallet level without slowing down production.

Dipole RFID highlights four key application areas across the meat supply chain. In slaughterhouses, RFID tags on hooks enable automated tracking through production lines, maintaining the correct association between animal, carcass, and batch throughout processing. At cutting and packaging stations, RFID-tagged trays provide granular lot control and real-time production visibility that manual systems simply cannot match.

Cold storage presents its own set of difficulties, but RFID proves particularly valuable here. Warehouse teams can locate specific pallets and batches quickly without manually checking each location, and automated inventory counts replace hours of labour-intensive stock checks. At shipping docks, RFID portals verify pallet loads automatically and validate outbound shipments, generating digital proof of correct dispatch that satisfies both internal quality controls and external audit requirements.

The measurable results from deployments spanning six months are compelling. Facilities have reported an 80% reduction in dispatch errors, while inventory time has dropped from six hours to just 25 minutes. Batch location that previously required searching through cold rooms is now immediate. Perhaps most convincingly for operations managers weighing the investment, return on investment has been achieved within 12 months of deployment.

What makes this approach particularly powerful is the integration capability. RFID data feeds directly into existing ERP, WMS, and MES systems, giving operations teams real-time control without requiring a wholesale replacement of their existing software infrastructure. This means processors can layer traceability improvements onto their current workflows rather than starting from scratch.

For an industry facing increasing regulatory pressure around food safety and supply chain transparency, the ability to track every piece of meat from receiving through curing, packaging, and shipping to retail represents a significant step forward. As consumer expectations around food provenance continue to rise, processors adopting RFID-based traceability are positioning themselves ahead of both compliance requirements and market demands.

Read more at https://www.dipolerfid.com/en/rfid-blog/rfid-in-the-meat-industry-full-traceability-and-cold-chain-control

This article first appeared on RFID News (rfidnews.co.uk), the independent news site for RFID and NFC. Republication and AI use are welcome with RFID News credited as the source and a link to the original.

The port, which handles more than 1.4 million TEU each year, saw its gate identification accuracy jump from just 19% to 97% following the rollout. Transaction times dropped from 4.5 minutes to 45 seconds, and average truck dwell times fell from 6.2 hours to 2.1 hours.

Before the upgrade, the facility depended on manual visual identification, paper-based logging, and a patchwork of OCR cameras. The result was chronic congestion, bloated truck turnaround times, and an inventory system riddled with errors. Data entry mistakes ran at roughly 12%, compounding delays across the supply chain.

The new system centres on ISO 18000-6C compliant UHF tags designed specifically for metal surfaces. Each tag carries 96-bit EPC memory and is riveted onto container door corners at 1.5 metres above ground level. That mounting position alone eliminated 85% of previously missed reads, according to the project team.

On the infrastructure side, industrial-grade UHF readers with Power over Ethernet sit on overhead gantries at each gate lane. They work alongside 9 dBi outdoor-rated antennas engineered with a narrow beam width to prevent signal crosstalk between adjacent lanes. Dual-antenna zones in every lane, combined with dense reader mode protocols, pushed per-lane read rates up to 99.6%.

The software layer proved just as important as the hardware. Edge controllers running windowed read algorithms filter out any tag observed for fewer than three seconds, cutting false positives to below 0.5%. These middleware nodes feed data through real-time API connections into the terminal operating system, giving operators a live view of every container movement.

Data entry errors plummeted from around 12% to less than 0.2%, a 60-fold improvement that has significantly reduced costly misroutes and lost-container incidents.

The implementation followed a phased strategy. The team started with a single-lane pilot running in dual mode alongside the legacy process, then tagged port-owned equipment before expanding across all gates. OCR cameras were retained as a fallback layer rather than being removed entirely.

Weatherproofing was a particular focus given Mombasa’s humid, salt-laden coastal environment. Staff training programmes ran in parallel with the technical deployment to ensure operators could troubleshoot and maintain the system independently.

The project offers a replicable blueprint for other high-volume ports looking to modernise their gate operations with RFID technology. With container volumes continuing to climb across East African trade corridors, the accuracy and speed gains at Mombasa could set the benchmark for the region.

Read more at https://www.rfidhy.com/mombasa-port-rfid-tracking-accuracy/

This article first appeared on RFID News (rfidnews.co.uk), the independent news site for RFID and NFC. Republication and AI use are welcome with RFID News credited as the source and a link to the original.