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- New Factory Expands U.S. Presence
- Sustainability and Carbon Emission Reduction
- Tracking Products from Manufacture to Recycle
Global radio frequency identification company Beontag RFID is growing its presence in North America with a new facility in Ohio, slated to open later this year to meet the growing demand for RFID tags and labels. This will take place as the company expands its sales of sustainable RFID tags to help businesses meet sustainability goals. This effort will involve the company’s ECO tag, with a printed antenna and a paper substrate, as well as a focus around using the technology increasingly for sustainability efforts, according to Barbara Dunin, Beontag’s marketing and communications director for environmental, social and governance.
The ECO Tag
Beontag RFID is the fastest-growing supplier of passive UHF and Near Field Communication (NFC) RFID inlays and labels in the Latin America market (see Beontag RFID’s VP Reveals the Firm’s Global Strategies). Established in 2012, the company is now gaining a presence globally. Its acquisition of adhesives business Technicote in September 2022 enables the RFID firm to produce tags at Technicote’s Ohio facility, bringing new products closer to North American customers, while allowing access to Technicote’s adhesives offerings (see Beontag Acquires Adhesive Company Technicote). That was the latest in a series of Beontag acquisitions, including Confidex in spring 2022 (see Label Company Beontag RFID Acquires Confidex).
This year, Beontag received ARC quality certification from Auburn University’s RFID Lab for its UHF RFID products being used to manage apparel and other retail goods, as well as other assets, inventory and individuals, for a variety of applications. The ARC program certifies that UHF RFID products meet specific quality requirements for retail and other industries. That certification may lead to more U.S.-based RFID product sales, according to Marcio Muniz, Beontag’s VP of digital transformation, and the company recently decided to launch an RFID factory in the United States.
New Factory Expands U.S. Presence
As part of this effort, Beontag invested approximately $16 million in late 2021 for new production machines for its Brazilian facility. “So we’re going to see a much bigger capacity on our side starting this year,” Muniz predicts. That additional capacity, he says, along with the ARC certification and growth in Northern American demand, has made the time right for Beontag to offer production in the United States, with the help of its latest acquisition.
Barbara Dunin
Technicote, founded in 1980, provides self-adhesive rolls and sheets, in addition to silicone-coated release liners. Beontag intends to build Technicote’s products into its own RFID tag portfolio serving the North American market. The firm operates four factories around its headquarters in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, including a new facility that Beontag will partially occupy for its own RFID tag production operations, while also leveraging the adhesives. The use of Technicote adhesives at the new factory is expected to reduce costs and carbon emissions around the shipping of product, Beontag reports.
That could lead to faster and less expensive labels for companies that require speed and volume in the United States, Muniz says. “For the last 10 to 15 years,” he explains, “most of the growth of our family [of products] has come from the mass market, especially through apparel.” But while apparel was the major RFID tag use case, he adds, “We see a lot of movement in other segments.” He cites the fact that Walmart expects suppliers to apply RFID tags for products in seven categories beyond apparel.
Muniz also points to logistics applications. UPS is using RFID to track packages, and while Walmart and UPS are both large companies serving as early adopters, Muniz says their successes are leading medium- and small-sized firms to follow suit. “So I think the growth in RFID will continue from there,” he states. Some suppliers already applying tags to their products to meet retailer requirements are finding ways to leverage RFID-based data from those tags for their own purposes. “That’s why I’m so excited. I think we have reached that point that we’re going to see snowball movement in the market.”
Sustainability and Carbon Emission Reduction
At its new Ohio factory, the company plans to produce both its standard RFID labels and tags, as well as the ECO tags. While it currently uses printed antennas from a third-party source to make the ECO tags, the company intends to begin printing the antennas at the Ohio facility and at its other factories, possibly beginning in 2024.
Marcio Muniz
According to Muniz, the printed antennas enable Beontag to make its tags in a more sustainable way. “The production of antennas usually was about a huge factory with a lot of chemicals” to make the polyethylene (PET)-based plastic substrates, he explains. With paper substrates and printed antennas, he notes, “You don’t need the chemicals. You don’t need the PET.” Moreover, the shipping of antennas for the production of inlays would be required once Beontag prints those antennas onsite.
Entry in the United States is another step in the company’s sustainability strategy, Dunin reports. The ECO RFID tag, she says, is a unique technology that can emit less than half of the carbon dioxide per unit, compared to that of a PET tag. Dunin notes that the company is aware the RFID tags it sells can add to its customers’ carbon emissions. “So if we can offer less carbonized or decarbonized product,” she adds, “we are also helping them to decrease that carbon footprint.”
“We also want to [advocate] the technology for more sustainability-related applications,” Dunin says. While the majority of brands are still using RFID for inventory management, or to enable self-checkout at the point of sale, there are other opportunities for carbon footprint reductions. “Very few are piloting projects using RFID for supply chain monitoring,” she notes, though she expects that to change. “Supply chain tracking is an enabler for sustainability efforts in multiple ways.”
Tracking Products from Manufacture to Recycle
For example, clothing brands with RFID tags applied to their products in the supply chain will be able to track where the fabric of the clothes originated, what materials were used to make them, and whether those materials were legally cultivated. “They’ll be able also to have more visibility of the smaller companies and partners that are present in the supply chain,” Dunin adds, to gain visibility into whether all constituents related to a particular product’s manufacture are complying with labor or human rights.
What’s more, Dunin says, users will be able to know what minority-led businesses, small businesses or other specific features companies can provide. “There are so many kinds of data you can extract from this kind of [technology],” she says, “that are related to the many commitments and challenges that those brands may have.” Some of those commitments, she adds, come from those who will be buying the products.
Consumers sometimes ask for information about the responsible behaviors exhibited by the brands in producing products, Dunin explains, while future regulations will shape how brands and retailers conduct their business and share details. That includes legislation now underway in Europe related to labeling and marking product packaging. RFID in the supply chain can also be used for practical purposes that reduce carbon emissions, such as more efficiently transporting goods directly to stores or customers with the least necessary distance or fuel consumption.
In some cases, Dunin reports, the use of RFID data to inform buyers of sustainable practices is an extension of features the technology already offers to luxury product makers and other brands. “They want to prove that [a given] item is authentic,” she says, “to avoid any kind of fraud. But by doing that, they can also unleash and enable the clients to engage in circular economy projects to the item back to [its origins].” In the long term, Dunin predicts, RFID tags could track products from the point of manufacture through recycling,
While Beontag focuses on tags and labels, it also offers some solutions and would consider building systems specifically for sustainability efforts. “We are eager to partner with someone that wants to do that,” Muniz says. The ECO tag’s printed antenna is fully recyclable, the company reports. Muniz has another way of looking at the benefits. “Every thousand inlays that you produce with paper instead of PET,” he states, “is [equivalent to] saving 15 plastic water bottles.” The company continues to offer PET-based RFID tags, Muniz says, though because the sustainable market is “really booming,” Beontag believes the ECO tags will be a key product offering going forward.
Key Takeaways:
- Beontag has its sights set on meeting RFID demand growth in North America, with its acquisition of Ohio adhesives company Technicote, a new product plant at the midwestern site, and ARC certification.
- The company’s parallel effort is increasing its sustainable tag sales and promoting sustainability programs through the strategized use of RFID data.