Announced from Mentor, Ohio on 27 April 2026, the strategic investment deepens a relationship that has been quietly maturing since 2022. It also formalises Avery Dennison’s role as Wiliot’s preferred inlay design, manufacturing, and commercial partner, and gives the global labelling giant a full board seat alongside the observer position it already held.

The headline number is the easy bit. The strategic logic underneath it tells a more interesting story for anyone watching how the identification and sensing market is shifting.

Wiliot’s IoT Pixels are stamp-sized, battery-free compute devices that harvest energy from ambient radio waves and report data over Bluetooth Low Energy. Pair them with cloud-based AI and machine learning, and you get continuous visibility of inventory, location, and condition across retail backrooms, distribution centres, and food cold chains. The pitch is supply chain intelligence at the item level, with infrastructure costs much closer to passive RFID than to traditional active sensor networks.

Francisco Melo, president of intelligent labels technologies and digital solutions at Avery Dennison, framed the move in plain terms. “We believe in passive Bluetooth Low-Energy and the opportunity to expand our portfolio with Wiliot’s solutions,” he said, adding that BLE is complementary to RFID and opens up new addressable markets the company could not previously serve with UHF RAIN tags alone.

For Wiliot, having an inlay manufacturer of Avery Dennison’s scale on board removes one of the biggest blockers to mass adoption of ambient IoT: industrial-grade tag production. Co-founder and CEO Tal Tamir was direct about the significance. “Avery Dennison is a global leader in digital identification solutions and the premier partner required to realize accelerating demand,” he said.

The two companies say they will now expand their joint go-to-market efforts across retail, logistics, and food, the same verticals where item-level RFID has driven much of Avery Dennison’s recent growth in intelligent labels.

For the wider RFID and auto-ID industry, the message is clear. Passive UHF RFID and ambient BLE are not in competition. They are stacking. UHF still wins for fast bulk reads at portals and dock doors. Battery-free BLE adds richer sensor data and direct readability from any modern smartphone or tablet. Brands that want to know where every unit is, what condition it is in, and how shoppers interact with it will increasingly want both technologies on the same item, often in the same inlay.

With $75 million of Avery Dennison capital now on the table, that vision just got a significant push toward scale.

Read more at https://averydennison.gcs-web.com/news-releases/news-release-details/avery-dennison-announces-strategic-75-million-investment-wiliot

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Spec H sits inside the GS1 Tag Performance Specifications, a set of letter-graded profiles that GS1 created so brand owners can pick RFID tags against consistent, measurable criteria rather than vendor marketing. Each specification sets out the read performance a tag is expected to deliver across free air, against different substrates, close to other tags, and at varying angles. The idea is that if a brand says it only buys Spec H certified tags, it can be confident every inlay on its packs or garments will behave in broadly the same way on the reader.

For SML, being first to market with a Spec H product is a notable claim. The company already supplies tags and inlays at scale to apparel, accessories and general merchandise brands, and has been pushing to keep pace as retailers move beyond store replenishment and towards loss prevention, self-checkout and inventory accuracy at pack level. A wider range of GS1 specifications means suppliers can match the right inlay to the right product rather than forcing one design to cover every use case.

The GB25U8 is aimed squarely at applications where GS1 Spec H performance is called for in the brand’s tagging rules. In practice this tends to mean products where tag orientation, proximity to other items and the substrate behind the tag are all variable and all need to be read reliably in store or in the distribution centre. By meeting the Spec H envelope, SML is effectively telling its customers that the inlay has been measured against GS1’s defined test regime and delivers against it, rather than against a bespoke manufacturer test.

The launch also fits a broader industry trend. GS1’s performance specifications have quietly become a shortcut in tender documents and tagging mandates, because they give supply chain and procurement teams a common language when comparing inlays. Expect more vendors to follow SML’s lead with their own Spec H certified products over the coming year as retail programmes expand and as RAIN RFID continues its move into new categories including food, beauty and home.

For brand owners already operating item-level RFID, the GB25U8 gives them a defined option to slot into their approved tag list. For brands still planning a programme, it is a reminder that matching the inlay to the application by specification, rather than by price or availability, is now the expected starting point for any serious RAIN RFID rollout.

Read more at https://www.sml.com/blogs/sml-rfid-launches-gb25u8-inlay-the-first-spec-h-inlay/

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Acrylic esters are a critical raw material in pressure-sensitive adhesives, the very adhesives that secure RFID inlays within smart labels used across retail, logistics, and supply chain applications. By switching to acrylates produced with renewable electricity, manufacturers of RFID inlay tags can reduce the carbon footprint of their products without any compromise on performance. BASF confirms the new acrylates are functionally equivalent to their conventional counterparts and work as drop-in replacements, meaning no retooling or reformulation is needed on the production line.

For the RFID sector, this is a meaningful step forward. As major retailers and logistics providers push for greener supply chains, the environmental credentials of every component in an RFID tag come under scrutiny. The adhesive layer that bonds a UHF RFID inlay to its substrate is no exception. With billions of RFID inlay tags produced each year for applications ranging from garment tagging to pallet tracking, even modest reductions in per-unit emissions add up quickly at scale.

Avery Dennison, one of the world’s largest producers of RFID inlays and smart labels, was the first company to commercialise these renewable energy acrylates. The move supports the company’s target of a 30% reduction in Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions and aligns with broader industry efforts to decarbonise the RFID supply chain from raw materials through to finished tags.

“This accomplishment highlights the power of investing in responsible production and efficient, future-ready operations,” said Michael Limbach, Vice President at BASF’s Performance Chemicals division. Collins Oluka, Vice President of Global Procurement and Sustainability at Avery Dennison, added that innovations like renewable-energy-enabled acrylic esters help advance the company’s long-term sustainability goals.

The collaboration signals a growing trend in the RFID industry: sustainability is no longer limited to how tags are used, but extends to how they are made. As RAIN RFID adoption continues to accelerate across retail, healthcare, and logistics, the demand for greener inlay production will only increase. Partnerships like this one between BASF and Avery Dennison demonstrate that reducing emissions and maintaining product quality can go hand in hand.

Read more at https://www.averydennison.com/en/home/news/press-releases/basf-and-avery-dennison-collaborate-to-launch-acrylates-based-on-renewable-electricity.html

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