Raflatac and Magellan join forces and apply high-speed RFID to pharma

UPM Raflatac and Magellan Technology have formed a strategic partnership to address the most challenging aspects of tagging pharmaceuticals by using RFID: high-speed issuing at pharmaceutical manufacturers, reliable identification throughout the supply chain, fighting counterfeit products with security features and dedicated RFID labels. The partnership was announced at Interphex 2006, the largest pharmaceutical manufacturing show of the year, held in New York, March 21 - 23.

Due to the rapidly growing demand to tag pharmaceutical products with RFID, companies are facing the limitations of applying today’s available RFID technologies to their existing manufacturing and distribution systems. Magellan’s Phase Jitter Modulation (PJM) RFID technology offers full stacking capabilities with zero separation of RFID tags, a high-speed read and write access to data on tags and a very powerful anti-collision method to rapidly identify large quantities of tagged pharmaceuticals. Writing unique 96 bit identification numbers reliably can be done at speeds of more than 3000 items per minute. Using Magellan’s range of fully shielded 3-axis tunnel readers the identification of tightly packed pharmaceutical items will achieve rates of 200 items per second.

Security features like unique ID, password controlled write access modes and a lock pointer to prevent any future modifications or tampering with the locked memory cells, offer a wide portfolio of functions to implement systems with a higher security against counterfeiting. UPM Raflatac, a leading RFID tag and inlay manufacturer, contributes strong experience to produce and supply high-quality RFID products dedicated to the specific requirements of the pharmaceutical industry. The joint UPM Raflatac and Magellan offering for pharmaceuticals is complemented and supported by existing PJM technology licensees Balogh, Nippon Signal and other members of Team PJM.

'Applying our high-speed PJM technology to tag pharmaceuticals will certainly benefit the industry as it solves most of the aspects of implementing RFID throughout the supply chain,' said Tim Frost, executive chairman and CEO of Magellan Technology. 'The partnership with UPM Raflatac enables us to bring this technology into the right form factors directly to the users in the pharmaceutical industry.'

'RFID holds an enormous potential in terms of anti-counterfeiting and supply chain management. Our RFID tags and inlays featuring PJM technology help the pharmaceutical industry meet the ePedigree requirements while also improving the efficiency of their supply chain,' said Samuli Strmberg, vice president marketing at UPM Raflatac's RFID business. 'The cooperation with Magellan Technology results in new innovations in our product portfolio designed for the pharmaceutical industry.'