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Impinj RFID Solution Ensures Food Freshness and Consumer Safety

Published: June 6, 2008

Impinj delivered a UHF RFID-based system to METRO Group, in the most comprehensive in-store quality assurance initiative to date.

UHF Gen 2 radio-frequency identification (RFID) solutions provider Impinj, Inc. recently announced a groundbreaking implementation in food freshness and customer safety. Impinj delivered a UHF RFID-based system to the world’s third largest retailer, METRO Group, in the most comprehensive in-store quality assurance initiative to date. At the launch of their Future Store, METRO Group began using RFID in the butchery to guarantee freshness, increase customer safety and efficiently manage inventory.

METRO Group adds an Impinj Monza powered tag to each meat package before placing it in a customer-facing Smart Freezer. Approximately 50 Impinj Speedway readers and 200 Impinj near-field UHF antennas inside the Smart Freezer continually monitor the "best before" date for each package and alert store personnel to remove goods before they reach that date. Additional read points at both point-of-sale terminals and exit gates make sure that stock levels are accurately monitored at all times. As a key element in METRO Group’s goal of ensuring that customers purchase only fresh meat products, Impinj’s technology provides real-time, automated inventory, eliminating a tedious and error-prone daily manual inventory.

"Impinj’s position as a leader in the RFID business and their experience with item-level tagging made them the natural choice for our implementation. We have worked with them in the past and have been satisfied with the results each time," said Dr. Gerd Wolfram, Managing Director of METRO Group Information Technology. "We use RFID in our real, – Future Store in Toenisvorst in order to ensure the quality assurance and inventory of fresh self-service meat products. We believe it is our responsibility to provide customers with the highest level of safety possible, and working with Impinj RFID technology gives us maximum levels of performance with minimal integration issues."