Jan 23, 2009Invengo Technology Corp., a 16-year-old Chinese RFID hardware manufacturer, is making its U.S. debut this week with a UHF EPC Gen 2 inlay priced at what appears to be a record-setting price: 5.8 cents apiece.
Although well-known in the Asian market—Invengo conducts business in China, Japan, Singapore and other countries in that region—the firm has not sold its tags and interrogators in the United States until now. "The company is very well established, probably one of the biggest RFID companies in the world, and employs about 300 people," says Philip Calderbank, Invengo's VP of sales and marketing. "But we know that Invengo is not well-known in the United States, and so we decided we needed to do something really impressive."
The new XCTF-8030 inlay uses NXP Semiconductor's Ucode G2XL chip. The low price, offered for volume orders of 5 million, drops even further for larger orders. Even at orders of 1 million, the inlay's price is only 6.0 cents, which Calderbank says is lower than any other ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) inlay currently available on the market.
"Almost two years ago, Avery Dennison announced a 7.9 cents price point [see Avery Dennison, RSI ID Lower Price Bar], and Avery's prices are still the same," Calderbank says. "Alien Technology's pricing has come down just below 7 cents. With all the research I've done, I'm still seeing Alien's prices at very close to 7 cents. We feel we've got a full penny advantage."
During the coming weeks, Invengo plans to announce low prices on its full range of RFID inlays, labels and readers, the company reports.
Invengo manufactures its tags at its plant in Shenzhen, China, where the company's headquarters are located. According to Calderbank, the facility has the capacity to produce millions of tags. In addition to its factory, the site also houses the firm's research and development department, as well as an EPCglobal-approved testing lab. In addition, he says, Invengo has opened an office in Herndon, Va., to serve the U.S. market, and intends to maintain sufficient stock on hand to be able to ship tags to its customers within five days of receiving an order.
Invengo got its start in 1993, and in 1999 was awarded a large contract from the Chinese government to develop and install an RFID-enabled transport management and information system. The first phase of that system, which took four years to complete, included more than 565,000 passive RFID tags, 17,000 portable and fixed interrogators and a data-management process that networks 507 rail stations and 335 freight terminals.
