News

UK firm Arlington Packaging has formed a joint venture with Roke Manor Research, the Siemens-owned innovation and product development centre, to develop an RFID system for tracking and tracing transit containers.

Arlington, which specialises in bulk containers for transporting liquids and pastes, said the system will enable its customers to ensure that containers are in the right place when needed. The technology will give Arlington’s users real-time location tracking via tags fixed to containers. The tags contain information identifying the container, its owner and its contents. This information is transmitted and picked up by readers located throughout the supply chain. It is then collected centrally and used to establish when containers are lost or in the wrong place.

Harry Fairbank, managing director of Arlington, said: “The use of RFID within the distribution chain to track and manage transit containers will reduce losses and increase utilisation. That will mean fewer wasted journeys to collect or redistribute containers that are in the wrong place.”

Arlington has yet to sell the system, but a spokeswoman said it is negotiating with some major UK companies.