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Category: Food Industry

  • Walmart and Avery Dennison bet on RFID in fresh food: how can Clustag lead supermarket automation? 

    Walmart and Avery Dennison bet on RFID in fresh food: how can Clustag lead supermarket automation? 

    The retail industry is transforming rapidly. RFID in fresh food drives much of this change. After years of trials and technical challenges, RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) now enters one of the most complex sectors: fresh food. Walmart, has implemented RFID tags from Avery Dennison in meat, bakery, and deli categories. This initiative marks a major turning point for grocery retail. 

    This adoption improves more than technology. It enhances supply chain efficiency, reduces food waste, and strengthens product traceability. Retailers now see that integrating RFID from warehouses to store shelves, transform how they manage fresh products.. 

    Why supermarkets are adopting RFID in fresh food  

    Supermarkets are adopting RFID in fresh food to tackle ongoing challenges in managing perishable and chilled products. Traditional barcode systems offer limited visibility and rely on manual intervention, causing stockouts, overstocks, and waste. RFID provides real-time, item-level tracking, supporting both operational efficiency and sustainability goals.  

    Key motivations behind RFID adoption 

    1. Inventory accuracy: RFID gives real-time visibility of stock at the item level, reducing errors and preventing out-of-stocks situations. 
    1. Shelf-life management: Retailers can track product expiry dates more precisely, improving rotation and reducing waste.  
    1. Sustainability: Enhanced monitoring helps supermarkets meet environmental targets, including reducing food waste and limiting overproduction. 
    1. Operational efficiency: RFID-driven automation reduces labor-intensive processes tasks, such as manual counting like manual counting, and boosts overall productivity.

    For Walmart and other top retailer, these capabilities are not optional. They are essential to maintaining competitiveness in the fast-moving grocery sector.  

    RFID for fresh, perishable and chilled products  

    Despite its promise, RFID adoption in fresh products has historically faced significant challenges. Cold, humid environments and metallic packaging can interfere with radio signals, making reliable reads difficult. Avery Dennison has addressed these technical obstacles with advanced RFID tags designed for harsh conditions, enabling consistent performance in chilled and perishable categories.  

    RFID performance in cold and humid environments  

    These innovations let supermarkets track meat, cheese, bakery, and deli items accuracy. RFID tags now withstand refrigeration, humidity, and complex packaging, allowing retailers to monitor stock across the entire cold chain, from distribution centres to store shelves. This visibility guarantees product safety, quality, and traceability on a scale that was previously impossible.  

    RFID traceability and expiry date accuracy 

     Item-level RFID tracking provides complete traceability across the supply chain. Each tag contains a unique identifier linked to production data, batch, and expiry information, enabling real-time monitoring of product movement. 

    Item-level tracking in meat, bakery, and deli 

    For Walmart, deploying Avery Dennison’s RFID tags in fresh categories allows for precise expiry tracking, automated inventory checks, and proactive stock rotation. Products nearing expiration can be flagged for promotion or redistribution, reducing food waste and enhancing customer satisfaction. 

    This capability also supports Walmart’s goal of cutting food waste by 50% by 2030, demonstrating how technology can directly impact sustainability initiatives.  

    RFID in cold chain and grocery supply chain operations 

    While in-store applications receive significant attention, the true potential of RFID in fresh food lies in integrating the technology across the entire supply chain. From distribution centres to delivery trucks, RFID provides continuous visibility into every product, enabling faster decision-making and reducing errors. 

    By linking RFID data to warehouse management systems (WMS) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) platforms, supermarkets gain full inventory control, ensuring products are handled correctly and efficiently throughout the cold chain.  

    Reducing food waste with RFID visibility 

    Food waste remains a critical challenge for supermarkets. Estimates suggest that up to 10% of fresh products are discarded due to mismanagement or inaccurate inventory tracking. RFID transforms this scenario by enabling real-time monitoring of freshness and expiry, allowing stores to reduce waste proactively. 

    Automation also frees staff from labor-intensive tasks such as manual counting and inspection, allowing them to focus on value-added activities. This data-driven approach improves supply forecasting, supplier collaboration, and sustainability reporting, making food waste reduction with RFID a practical and measurable outcome. 

    Industry leaders driving RFID adoption 

    Avery Dennison’s RFID solutions have overcome key barriers in cold, humid, and metallic environments, making RFID for fresh and chilled products feasible at scale. Their technology supports high read rates and reliable performance across a variety of packaging types, setting the stage for widespread adoption. 

    Walmart’s RFID deployment in grocery 

    Walmart’s initiative is one of the largest in the world, potentially involving billions of RFID tags. By adopting item-level tracking for fresh products, Walmart demonstrates the transformative impact of RFID in fresh food, paving the way for other retailers to follow suit.  

    Automated warehouse RFID solutions for grocery 

    While store-level RFID is crucial, warehouse automation is where the technology delivers its highest return on investment. Clustag, a specialist in RFID for complex environments, has developed RFID tunnel systems capable of reading entire pallets or boxes of fresh products in seconds. 

    RFID tunnels for food processing 

    Clustag’s tunnels enable: 

    • High-speed mass reading of over 1.000 units per hour. 
    • Seamless integration with WMS and ERP systems for real-time inventory visibility. 
    • Error reduction in picking, packing, and dispatch. 
    • End-to-end traceability from production to store shelf. 

    With experience in both food and fashion retail, Clustag is well-positioned to help supermarkets scale RFID adoption, driving automation and efficiency across their supply chains. 

    The future of supermarket automation with RFID 

    Experts that RFID in fresh food is no longer a luxury, it’s a strategic necessity. Manolo Reguart, Director of Strategy and Business Development in retail technology, explains: 

    “RFID in fresh products is essential for efficiency, customer experience, and sustainability. Combining smart labeling with automated RFID systems like tunnels will reduce costs, improve inventory accuracy, and ensure food quality. Retailers who delay adoption risk falling behind” 

    The integration of RFID, automation, and data analytics is reshaping supermarkets. With Walmart, Avery Dennison, and Clustag leading the charge, the future of grocery retail is built on real-time visibility, reduced waste, and complete supply chain transparency.  

    See Clustag in action and transform your warehouse operations 

    Visit our Customer Experience Centre to see our solutions in action and experience firsthand the speed, accuracy, and traceability that Clustag can bring to your warehouse. Our RFID systems, including RFID tunnels and automated tracking solutions, are designed to handle complex environments with chilled, perishable, and packaged goods, ensuring end-to-end visibility across your supply chain.  

    By exploring our solutions in person, you will understand how RFID in fresh food can: 

    • Streamline order preparation and reduce errors. 
    • Optimize inventory management with real-time item-level tracking. 
    • Enhance traceability for perishable products, ensuring compliance and reducing waste. 
    • Integrate seamlessly with your existing WMS and ERP systems for a complete digital workflow. 

    To see how our RFID solutions can be tailored to your specific operations, fill out our contact form and one of our experts will guide you through a personalized demonstration. This interactive session will provide practical insights into how Clustag can accelerate your warehouse automation, improve accuracy, and boost operational efficiency. 

    Don’t miss the opportunity to optimize your warehouse processes, enhance food safety, and elevate your oder preparation to the next level.  

  • Use of RFID in the grocery industry

    Use of RFID in the grocery industry

    RFID technology has developed rapidly in recent years. It is now gaining popularity in the grocery industry. Industries use RFID for product identification, tracking and traceability. This ensures food safety, improves quality, and reduces waste, and increases profitability and customer satisfaction.

    RFID systems in grocery industry

    Each food item is tagged with an RFID tag during the packaging process to uniquely identify it. After production, when the items have been stored in your warehouse, in transit or displayed in the retail store, you can automatically get a complete inventory of the grocery items in real-time.

    1. Improved inventory management

    The first major use case for RFID in the grocery industry is improved inventory management by replacing old stock-keeping methodologies. RFID technology gives retailers an option for an accurate and quick overview of their entire stock. Moreover, having a precise picture of the store inventory is indispensable for the grocery industry, where items need to be managed and monitored much more accurately as most food items are perishable, some with narrow expiry windows.

    2. Efficient supply chain management

    In supply chain management, RFID tags are quite useful to trace food products with great accuracy. RFID technology allows remote stock counts that are both highly accurate and very fast compared to other methods. This results in increased process efficiency, superior inventory management and waste reduction.

    3. Automatic control and counting

    The operators of grocery sectors have to guarantee efficient delivery to retail stores and manage the entire logistics network with speed. With RFID technology, it is easy to manage the complete logistics operations and detect issues that can be corrected quickly. With RFID devices available at each point of the supply chain, you can quickly and easily identify the location of any food product down to the pallet and package. This is sometimes necessary if you have to remove or replace a particular batch of a product.

    4. Reuse of packaging material

    In the grocery industry, after delivery of the product, the packing boxes and pallets are reused after a necessary cleaning process. RFID tags correctly identify boxes and pallets, verify them, and send them back for reuse. You can efficiently find any anomalies in the number of packages sent and returned, thereby reducing the number and location of lost boxes and pallets.

    5. Grocery safety

    Food companies use RFID systems in dairy, fruit, meat and bread to maintain safe environmental conditions. During transportation, storage and display. Ensuring grocery safety has a very high priority for food delivery companies as consumer health is paramount in ensuring purchasers’ trust and loyalty.

    6. Traceabilit

    In the grocery industry, the traceability of products is a major concern, for consumers as well as for retailers. Consumers demand high transparency regarding food sources and processes as they are now more health conscious.

    RFID carries type, quantity, and origin information, which the system collects throughtout a product’s life cycle, giving consumers 100% traceability and visibility of the entire chain of a product’s lifetime. Check Clustag RFID solutions for a better understanding.

    7. Grocery waste reduction

    The expiry of unsold food products results in a large amount of grocery wastage. It is also quite time-consuming and expensive to manage expired products on the reail shop floor. RFID systems can not only monitor and maintain stock levels on shelves but also monitor the expiry date of individual products, and can immediately signal to the floor staff about items nearing expiry that need to be moved forward or priced down for quick sale.

    8. Personalized nutrition

    In today’s health-conscious society, consumers demand specific products that they want to buy and consume. Business owners have to strive hard to keep up with this demand for specialized food products. RFID tags are being used to track consumer interest to create personalized nutritional products for customers. For health-savvy consumers, RFID tags are very useful as they want to know more about the health benefits of each product they want to consume.

    9. Overall customer satisfaction

    Introducing RFID tag into the retail system gives end users a broader picture. Customers can find a product’s history even after purchase. By entering a code on the store website, they gain confidence and assurance. It helps to create a more positive customer experience. If food product history can be obtained by the customer, they will show more trust towards the product, and they will re-purchase them with confidence.

    10. Cost

    Cost is major challenge in the widespread use of RFID technology. RFIDs are still expensive compared to barcode labels. The higher cost of RFID tags makes it a challenge to use them economically to mount them onto each retail item. However, as the high volume RFID manufacturing processes are improving, it is lowering their cost, resulting in their wider adoption in the grocery sector.

    Wrapping up

    RFID technology has been able to solve many challenges faced by the grocery industry. The technology has matured to a point where it is viable for a more diverse range of products. The only thing that may hold it back is its cost. Although the cost of RFID tags has dropped considerably, the price of food products is much lower than other retail products.

    But some fresh products like meat and fish and some fruits and vegetables have both a high enough price range and limited shelf life which makes economic sense to tag them with RFID.

    The grocery industry is the new frontier for RFID, and it will gain popularity exponentially since it benefits everyone involved in the grocery industry; from suppliers, stockists, retailers, consumers and even to the world at large.

    Contact us to learn how our RFID business intelligence solutions can improve efficiency in your operations!