Alien Technology touts radio frequency identification labels at costs of 12.9 cents to meet demands of customers
Morgan Hill, CA — September 15, 2005 — Alien Technology Corp. said this week that it is offering electronic product code (EPC) Class 1 radio frequency identification (RFID) labels priced at 12.9 cents. The price represents a 44 percent decrease in the price of 96-bit RFID labels from Alien in the past 12 months, reflecting progress toward the goal of more 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 EPC label 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 Department of Defense (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, said Keith McDonald, senior vice president, Alien Technology Corp. Alien has been very clear about our roadmap for aggressive cost reduction, and this 12.9 cent price for labels in relatively modest quantities demonstrates our progress in driving down the underlying cost of RFID tags.
The 12.9-cent RFID label offered by Alien is made possible by the company's manufacturing process, Fluidic Self Assembly (FSA), and Alien's new High Speed Strap Attach Machine (HiSAM) 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, Calif., headquarters. Alien has now doubled that capacity to two billion units per year and is building a 47,000-square-foot facility in Fargo, N.D., with capacity to produce up to 20 billion units per year in the future.
