Tracking Brazilian Clothes Made in China

iTag has partnered with Taiwanese company Printronix to provide RFID tags to be sewn onto garments made in Asia by brands sold in Brazil.
Published: July 17, 2018

Brazil’s iTag RFID Smart Labels has announced a partnership with Taiwan’s Printronix to provide radio frequency identification tags that will be sewn onto Asian-made apparel by brands sold in Brazil. The deal will allow garments to be tracked from the point of manufacture in countries like China and Vietnam.

The entire process of goods passing through Asian ports, until their arrival in Brazil, can now be traced. In addition, the counting of items at their time of arrival can be optimized, with costs reduced due to the use of RFID technology to control manufacturing.

iTag’s Sérgio Gambim (left) and a representative from Printronix

With this foreign marketing strategy, iTag aims to boost the distribution and printing of smart tags throughout Asia. To that end, its efforts will be supported by Printronix, a global industrial printing company, through Maxhill Co. Through the partnership, an RFID printing bureau will be created in Taiwan. iTag and Maxmill will be responsible for the printing and serialization of RFID tags for products manufactured in other countries by businesses that use iTag’s RFID solution in Brazil.

The service is intended for customers looking to adopt RFID technology, but for which some of their production is carried out outside of Brazil. The manufacturing takes place on demand, according to a customer’s particular needs, thereby meeting the growing needs of the market with economy and agility. The ready-made labels can be delivered to any customer’s manufacturing destination, either in Asia or in Europe.

“The RFID system utilizes 915 MHz radio waves and brings a number of business benefits,” iTag announced in a prepared document, “such as increasing productivity, tracking the traceability of an item’s path in the chain of processes, managing inventory more easily, avoiding losses, reducing waste and simplifying logistics.”

“iTag’s partnership with Printronix will bring peace of mind to those who carry out operations on another continent,” explains Sérgio Gambim, iTag’s CEO, “because the T6000 RFID printer line is already homologated in iTag’s solution, as the entire Taiwan team has been trained to manage the information received from Brazil.” For Gambim, the strategic partnership represents a major step forward in offering iTag’s customers control of production at the factory, with items tagged at the point of origin with RFID. This, he says, should assist in invoicing procedures.

With many successful use cases under its belt in Brazil, iTag is a pioneer in the generation of labels utilizing GS1‘s EPC Gen 2 RFID standard. Printronix, which has offered services that enable the application of RFID for more than 40 years, has become a key partner for iTag in the international market.