- From perishable food to reusable pallets, Bluetooth Low Energy is unlocking a new layer of real-time, scan-free intelligence – and innovating what smart tracking looks like for the world’s most complex supply chains.
For decades, Barcodes, QR, and RFID have done the heavy lifting in supply chain visibility. They’ve helped us answer the basic, but essential, question: Where is it?
As supply chains become more complex and high-stakes – pressured by tighter regulations, shrinking margins, and rising customer expectations – knowing an asset’s location at a checkpoint is no longer enough. Today, it’s just as critical to understand what’s happening to that asset in real time – and what’s already happened to it along the way.
This is where Bluetooth Low Energy, or BLE, starts to change the game.
Lower Infrastructure Costs, Longer Range, and Richer Data
Long a mainstay of consumer tech, BLE is now stepping into enterprise and industrial settings with a much more ambitious agenda: to enable continuous, scan-free, context-rich visibility for the assets that matter most— without the infrastructure bloat or cost that’s limited past approaches.
BLE inlays and sensors can support environmental monitoring, operate at ranges far beyond NFC or HF RFID— often tens or even hundreds of meters— and communicate with devices that are already everywhere: smartphones, tablets, IoT gateways, and other BLE-equipped infrastructure.
Impact on Supply Chains
That ubiquity has major implications for infrastructure cost and deployment. Where RFID requires compatible readers, portals, and antennas— investments that can make site-wide coverage and scale cost-prohibitive— BLE-enabled systems can tap into existing connectivity layers, drastically reducing both upfront and ongoing complexity. In warehouse, healthcare, and logistics settings, this alone can shift the economics of asset visibility.
Equally important is the data model BLE enables. While traditional AutoID systems typically focus on event-based reads, BLE tags— especially when cloud-connected— continuously stream data that can be filtered, analyzed, and translated into actionable insights. With integrated sensors for temperature, light, motion, and other environmental factors, BLE offers real-time assurance that sensitive goods are maintained within required thresholds.
That’s especially critical in regulated and condition-sensitive supply chains— such as blood plasma transport or chemotherapy distribution— where knowing how an item was handled is just as important as knowing where it is.
How Royal Mail Is Scaling BLE Across Critical Logistics Operations
BLE is already proving its value in high-stakes environments. Royal Mail, for example, turned to Wiliot’s energy-harvesting BLE sensors to track nearly a million rolling cages used across its logistics operations. The economics of RFID weren’t feasible in this case due to infrastructure and tag costs. BLE enabled continuous asset-level tracking with significantly lower system overhead, allowing the organization to increase transparency and efficiency without overhauling its physical footprint.
Tag design plays a key role in making these deployments work. Wiliot’s BLE sensors operate without batteries by harvesting RF energy and transmitting in efficient bursts. Identiv, a leader in specialized IoT, works to ensure that BLE tags, which encase and protect the sensors, can be engineered into designs that meet the demands of real-world environments. With momentum building, ABI Research projects that shipments of Ambient IoT devices, harvesting energy from their surrounding environments, will reach 1.1 billion units in 2030.
Together, this combination of ambient intelligence and specialized engineering makes it possible to extend BLE’s sensing and connectivity capabilities into environments once considered out of reach.
This level of adaptability opens up new possibilities for BLE adoption across a range of sectors. Whether addressing temperature-sensitive pharmaceuticals, reusable logistics assets, or complex warehouse networks, BLE provides a flexible, scalable foundation for real-time visibility.
Positioning BLE Within a Broader IoT Stack
Still, BLE isn’t a universal solution— and that’s precisely the point. In scenarios where the goods require checkpoint-only visibility, as opposed to continuous, the cost of RFID tags is appealing— though the RFID readers can drive up overall deployment costs. Alternatively, in rural or ultra-long-range scenarios, technologies like LoRa are better suited.
But in hybrid environments – those requiring both discrete reads and continuous sensing— BLE adds significant value. RFID can continue anchoring key checkpoints. NFC can support customer experience interactions. BLE can power backend visibility and frontend intelligence. It’s about applying the right technology to the right problem— based on range, power needs, data requirements, and cost considerations.
The BLE ecosystem itself is also maturing. Bluetooth 6.0 introduces features like channel sounding, which promises more precise location accuracy (to within less than three feet of its actual position)— opening doors for indoor positioning and warehouse automation. The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (Bluetooth SIG) governing body is also continuing to invest in BLE’s role within the broader ambient IoT framework, while IEEE802.11 and 3GPP are developing their own ambient IoT standards. All of this work will drive further interoperability, efficiency, and scalability.
The Benefits of BLE
For industries navigating increasingly complex, high-stakes, and time-sensitive logistics, BLE offers a new foundation— one that’s agile, data-rich, and well-aligned with modern infrastructure. It’s now expanding beyond its traditional role in the consumer market to enable a more intelligent, detailed view of the supply chain— bringing continuous visibility, environmental context, and scalable efficiency to the systems that keep the world moving.
In turn, BLE helps lower operational costs, reduce risk through improved traceability and compliance, minimize environmental waste through battery-free sensing, and support critical outcomes like patient safety and product integrity across sectors such as healthcare, food, logistics, and pharmaceuticals.