RFID in the North American market

Container Centralen, Inc. was established in 2006 after which the North American business expanded rapidly in the horticultural sector.

Benefitting from the solid foundation the company has in Europe, North American customers now also have access to an industry-wide system for shipment of CC Containers (shipping racks) to improve supply chain efficiency.

RFID in the North American Market

In 2010, Container Centralen implemented a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) system for tracking of CC equipment in North America. The implementation included 150 locations and 250,000 CC Containers (shipping racks) that CC supplies to horticultural customers throughout North America. An additional 50,000 CC Containers will be added to the USA pool in 2011 and these too will be fitted with RFID tags bringing the total 'tagged pool' to 300,000 units. CC's USA RFID implementation was very successful and exceeded the business improvement goals that had been established for the program. With the improvements to CC Container tracking that have been gained from the RFID system, CC is now focused on extracting additional value added information/reports from the data being generated as the CC Containers move throughout the horticultural supply chain.

Largest 'Active tag' deployment

Container Centralen's 2010 introduction of RFID to its USA business allowed CC to spearhead the application of such technology in the supply chain. By applying a so-called 'active' RFID tag, Container Centralen's project is in fact the world's largest active tag deployment.

The 'active' tag is the RFID chip that is built into the identification padlock. It is battery powered and therefore continuously emits a signal that can be ready by scanners at retailers, growers, distributors etc. This particular tag varies significantly from the tag which is used in the RFID solution in the European horticultural industry - also lead by Container Centralen, which is based on a 'passive tag'.