Produce Growers and Container Coalition Conduct RFID Field Test

When the shipment leaves the Stemilt facility, it passes an RFID interrogator for its first read, then is scanned again upon arrival at the entry dock of Wal-Mart's distribution center. The containers of fruit are placed in cold storage for about 24 hours. The container tags are scanned as they leave the DC, then upon arrival at one of the 100 Wal-Mart stores, and again as the containers are moved to the sales floor. Once emptied, the containers are taken back to the dock doors, where they are collapsed, scanned, stacked and shipped to an Orbis facility in Garland, Texas. There, they undergo cleaning and sanitizing at temperatures of 170 degrees, and QLM encodes a new EPC number on each container's tag before sending it back to Stemilt to begin the process again.

Orbis agreed to accept its own containers as well as those of competing companies Georgia-Pacific and IFCO (which are also field-test participants) because it is the only participating reusable container company that has a facility with the necessary RFID portals. That openness between the container vendors has been striking, McCartney says, adding, "This is one of the first times three competing companies [in this industry] have worked together like this."

Tanimura & Antle, a grower of leafy greens, brings its Orbis plastic containers (fitted with Alien tags) into the field, where lettuce is cut, wrapped and packed directly in the container. The containers are taken to Tanimura & Antle's processing plant, where the lettuce in each container is chilled, washed and inspected. The container tags are then read prior to shipping to Wal-Mart through the same pattern as Stemilt's apple shipments: After passing through Wal-Mart's DC to a Wal-Mart store, they return empty to the Orbis facility, where they are cleaned and sanitized, after which QLM encodes new EPC numbers to the tags and sends them back to Tanimura & Antle.

In the case of Frontera Produce, the grower loads its jalapeño peppers into bins, then packs the cleaned and sorted vegetables into IFCO reusable plastic containers fitted with UPM Raflatac tags. They, too, are shipped to the Wal-Mart distribution center and on to Wal-Mart retail locations. After returning empty to the Orbis facility, as with other containers involved in the test, they are cleaned and sanitized and the tags are re-encoded before being returned to Frontera for the next cycle.

The three producers were selected, McCartney explains, because of the different packaging processes and varying sizes, shapes and fluid levels of their products. For example, he says, peppers have little liquid, while apples have more and lettuce has the most, making RFID reads more challenging. "Our goal with this pilot is diversity."