South African mining company nominated for RFID Breakthrough Award 2006

South African mining company Kumba Resources has been nominated for the Best Pilot Award at the RFID Breakthrough Awards 2006. The company, which uses the tags to track ore from blast to customer, has been nominated by its technology supplier RFID.SA, who will be hoping that its customer will be picking up an award at the RFID Breakthrough Awards evening dinner on November 8 at Banqueting House, Whitehall, London.

The pilot project was a huge success for Kumba Resources with the RFID system enabling different grades of ore to be traced right through the supply chain.

‘The tag was designed to withstand a blast,’ said Kevin O'Neill, director, RTI.SA, ‘its perfect for mining applications as it can be read in extremely harsh environments. Kumba are discovering so much real time data that they only dreamt of gaining before the implementation.’

O'Neill said about the nomination: ‘We've decided to nominate this project as we are so proud of our development and what our customer has done", they've shown that real benefits can be gained with this type of technology.’

The RFID Breakthrough Awards 2006 will be judged by such prestigious names as Dr Peter Harrop (chairman, IDTechEx Ltd), David Lyon (EPC global business manager, GS1UK), Ivano Ortis (program manager, IDC Vertical Markets), Chris Rezendes (vice president, Venture Development Corporation), Nigel Montgomery (European research director, AMR Research) and Dr Gerd Wolfram (managing director, MGI Metro Group Information Technology GmbH).

The RFID Breakthrough Awards 2006 are organized in conjunction with the 7th RFID Networking Forum, which will be taking place on November 9 at the Olympia 2 Conference Centre in London. To find out more about either of these events please visit http://www.rfidawards.com/ and http://www.rfidforum.com/