Coming Soon: RFID Tags in Paper Labels

11/05/2004

Label maker Worldlabel.com (New York, N.Y.) has announced that it has a patent pending for embedding RFID tags in self-adhesive paper labels. Once approved, the technology figures to make it easier and more cost-effective for manufacturers to vary label sizes and to convert batch labels.

Today, RFID tags are made with a laminating process, notes Russell Ossendryver, U.S. manager of Worldlabel. Besides the fact that laminates are more expensive than paper, these tags are not always embedded in the same place within a label, he says, and often don’t work.

Differentiating between functioning and non-functioning labels is a costly and time-consuming process. Putting tags in paper labels makes it easier to detect and replace non-working labels before they are stuck to a batch, says Ossendryver, who claims company tests have proven 100% accurate in producing working labels.

The simplicity of paper also makes it easier for manufacturers to use different sized labels for different customers—just a few seconds to change the size of a roll stock from, say, four-by-six inches to three-by-three. Also, Worldlabels labels can be embedded with chips of varying standards, and can also be printed with barcodes if necessary.