This article was originally published by RFID Update.
April 3, 2007—RFID hardware and solutions provider Sirit announced today that it has been awarded a $2 million contract from the Orange County Transportation Authority (OCTA). Beginning in the second quarter of this year the Toronto-based company will deliver RFID transponders to the OCTA over the course of three years, transponders that are used by commuters for automatic tolling along the SR-91 Riverside Freeway Express Lanes in Southern California.
The contract represents an extension to an existing agreement between the OCTA and Sirit. “We continue to receive quality products, software services, and technical support from Sirit, which gives us the confidence to renew our agreement for the following three years,” said 91 Express Lanes general manager Kirk Avila.
Sirit is one of the more recognized RFID reader vendors that has not aggressively pursued the retail supply chain market. It has carved out more business in areas like asset tracking and automatic vehicle identification (AVI), periodically announcing deals with transportation authorities around North America. In 2006, a full 77% of its revenues came from AVI.
More recently the company appears to be positioning itself for the anticipated opportunity in near field communication, or NFC, which will see RFID-enabled cell phones open up a wide variety of applications in so-called mobile commerce. In January the company announced that NXP (formerly Philips Semiconductors) had appointed it the first global reseller and integration partner for Java-based NFC middleware for cell phones, and in February Japanese handset manufacturer Kyocera selected Sirit to supply NFC software and technology engineering services.
Financially, the company had a challenging 2006. It laid off 25% of its staff and closed two locations toward the end of the year (see Sirit Trims Staff Amid Rough Supply Chain RFID Market), setting a goal of cash flow neutrality by the end of 2007. Part of the hardship was caused by heavy expenses related to its acquisition of the assets of SAMSys, a defunct UHF reader manufacturer that served the supply chain market (see RFID Reader Company SAMSys Sells Assets). The company ended the year on an up note, however, with annual revenues hitting CAD$21.7 million (roughly US$18.7 million), which was a record for the company and represented 30% revenue growth over 2005.