SATO Rounds Off its Range of Consumables with HF RFID Tags by UPM Raflatac

SATO, a leading manufacturer of label and barcode printers and a specialist in data collection systems (DCS) and radio frequency identification (RFID), now distributes HF RFID tags and inlays produced by Finnish RFID specialist UPM Raflatac (formerly UPM Rafsec).

The UPM Raflatac HF range perfectly completes SATOs extensive portfolio of consumables for industrial labelling needs, which ranges from barcode labels to UHF RFID tags and state-of-the-art Gen2-capable UHF RFID FlagTags. The HF (high frequency) RFID tags by UPM Raflatac come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes and can be integrated into all common types of labels. All HF RFID tags share the same frequency standard of 13.56 MHz, which permits ranges of up to one metre between the tag and the RFID reader. The flexible HF tags, which also contain the RFID chip and the attached antenna, are only 250 microns thick.

The various applications for such HF tags range from supply chain management in production and retail, to medication tagging and patient identification in the healthcare sector, all the way to security tagging and identification of books, CDs etc. in libraries. RFID tags by UPM Raflatac have already been deployed with great success at companies such as METRO, REWE and Wal-Mart, as well as at their suppliers as part of their broad-based RFID initiatives.

SATO has also developed the famous FlagTag together with UPM Raflatac. The FlagTag is a UHF RFID label, whereby the antenna sticks out perpendicularly from the actual surface of the label. Thus, the readability of a SATO FlagTag is not impaired by the material or the packing of the labelled item. Only with the introduction of the FlagTag and SATOs automatic FlagTag applicator has fully functional pallet labelling with UHF RFID tags become possible - whatever the pallet content may be.