At the opening of the EPC Global Conference in Atlanta on September 13, Alien Technology Corp. announced the availability of EPC Class 1 RFID labels priced at 12.9 cents. This represents a 44% decrease in the price of 96-bit RFID labels from Alien in the past 12 months, reflecting significant progress towards the goal of widely available, economic RFID labels. The Alien Technology® ALL-9338-02, a fully converted EPC Class 1 tag, can be purchased today for 12.9 cents in order quantities of 1 million or more.
The Alien® Squiggle™, available as the ALL-9338-02 pressure sensitive label, is suitable for use in general supply chain applications such as those being implemented by major retailers, their suppliers and the DoD around the world. The label is one-half inch by four inches in size, small enough for use on a wide variety of products.
“Customers are expecting and demanding dramatic reductions in RFID tag costs to improve the business case and ROI for their RFID implementations,” says Keith McDonald, Sr. V.P., Alien Technology Corporation. “RFID labels from Alien and our extensive eco-system of Alien Qualified Partners can be delivered at prices appropriate for mass adoption in the retail supply chain and other industries.”
The 12.9 cent RFID label offered by Alien is made possible by the company's patented manufacturing process, Fluidic Self Assembly (FSA®) and Alien’s new cost efficient High-Speed Strap Attach Machine assembly technology. These manufacturing technologies allow for low-cost packaging of very small semiconductors in very high volumes that in turn are packaged as low-cost RFID tags.
Alien previously announced the ramp of its RFID chip packaging capacity to one billion straps per year at its Morgan Hill, CA headquarters. Alien has now doubled that capacity to two billion units per year and is building a 47ꯠ sq ft facility in Fargo, ND.
And Gen 2, too
The company also announced the addition of new EPC Class 1 Gen 2 and Gen 1 tag solutions for a variety of applications. As all Alien® Squiggle tags share the same standard “squiggle” antenna design, Squiggle family customers are freed from having to extensively reengineer and re-qualify their tagging processes when taking advantage of new Gen 2 technology.
Alien’s new Gen 2 offerings include the ALL-9440 and ALL-9460 Omni-Squiggle tags. The ALL-9440 is optimized for most packaging applications, including the tagging of cases containing certain products with metal and liquid.
