Gemini Traze sets up RFID tag plant

Gemini Traze RFID has set up India's first high-volume radio frequency identification (RFID) tag manufacturing facility near Chennai at an investment of about Rs 18 crore. Gemini Traze, a 100 per cent subsidiary of Gemini Communications, also plans to pump in Rs 15 crore more this year.

The fully automated tag manufacturing facility, an RFID products manufacturer with a focus on readers and antennae, will have an annual production capacity of 100 million tags. It will manufacture tags conforming to the ISO 15693, 14443, 18000 and EPC Gen 2 standards. It will also offer tags in various forms and sizes and customised tags for specific applications.

R Vijayakumar,chairman and managing director, Gemini Communications, told reporters that the new tag manufacturing facility would trigger mass deployment of RFID technology and has been set up to commoditise RFID technology in the country. "Tag manufacturing is a big step forward in promoting RFID adoption in the country," he said.

The tags will be available for mass implementation at one-fifth of their earlier cost.The cost of RFID tags was seen as an obstacle to mass implementation of RFID technology in the yet-to-mature Indian RFID market with import duties and other overheads. Gemini will be in a position to offer a price of Rs 10 per tag for a bulk order of 5 million tags or more,he added.

Over the next two months, the plant will start rolling out products that could be used for payment transactions, asset tracking and tolling. Initially, the plant is expected to operate on about 30 per cent capacity as the company does not have any order for the tags. But big orders are expected over the next six months since Gemini Traze is already engaged in implementing over 39 pilots in the retail, industrial, transporation and healthcare segments.

The company has an employee strength of about 80. In the first year of operation of the new manufacturing plant, the Middle East and South East Asian markets are expected to account for 50 per cent of the output, India for 10 per cent, Europe 15-20 per cent, and the rest from North America. A foray into the Europe and North American markets is planned in the two months.