Tageos launches new Innovation Center of Excellence

Tageos, designer and manufacturer of RFID inlays and tags and part of the Fedrigoni Group, has opened its new research and development facility in Munich, Germany.

The Tageos Innovation Center of Excellence (ICoE) is the company’s bold response to a strong customer and market demand to drive the development of the latest products and new applications in RFID, HF and NFC and the wireless Internet of Things.  

As a new, integral part of Tageos’ existing R&D and innovation capabilities, the ICoE’s areas of expertise now also include special antennas for RFID inlays and tags, emerging RF technologies like Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), as well as the attachment of flexible batteries, sensors and other innovative components. 

In addition to serving as a technology innovation hub, the ICoE offers Engineering-as-a-Service (EaaS) capabilities that provide comprehensive support for customers and partners worldwide for further optimizing product requirements technically and commercially, and leveraging EaaS as a resource to prototype and industrialize new products. Tageos' highly skilled and experienced teams can design, build and test final items in smaller quantities. Volumes at scale will be seamlessly passed to the company’s high-quality, certified production facilities in France, the US and in China, with annual production capacities of more than 11 billion units today. Additional EaaS offerings include project consulting and application engineering, optimization of technical processes as well as programming and implementation support to ensure the best technical and business fit. 

The new Tageos’ ICoE joins the Fedrigoni Group's Innovation Center in Verona (Italy) and represents the foundation of a new European hub pioneering the exploration of technologies in the RFID and Internet of Things, and the research and development in the world of smart papers and labels. RFID is increasingly strategic for Fedrigoni, which is exploiting every possible synergy with its two businesses: the industries served by the group - from luxury, to pharmaceutical, from wine and spirits, to food, from beauty to FMCG - are in fact looking more and more for innovations to enable authentication, brand protection, traceability, as well as customer experience for its products and packaging. 

The Munich region is known as a technology center with a vibrant ecosystem, and the ability to tap into this was one of the deciding factors for the location. The new site is a 700+ sqm dedicated R&D center that currently employs approximately 15 employees. It represents a multi-million Euro investment and will further strengthen Tageos’ strategy to accompany and support customers and business partners throughout the RFID and wireless IoT ecosystem. In addition to the company’s HQ in Montpellier, France, and other production sites in Fletcher, USA, and Guangzhou, China, the Innovation Center of Excellence in Munich marks a clear signal to maintain and expand the company’s capabilities. 

Tageos will also offer comprehensive testing and expanded support levels at the new ICoE to help customers scale their own production processes for high volume manufacturing of NFC and RFID-enabled labels or other types of connected physical items with embedded inlays. This service can be provided in small batches to fine-tune manufacturing parameters as well as on larger scale. 

As more and more industries use RFID technology to solve operational challenges, the demand for different form factors and materials has also increased. For example, printed antennas are a bleeding-edge innovation, enabling ultra-thin, flexible, cost-effective and sustainable RFID inlays for smart packaging and smart labels.  

Marco Nespolo, CEO, Fedrigoni Group, said: ‘As the majority shareholder of Tageos, we are excited to celebrate the opening of this new, state-of-the-art R&D facility as a symbol of our combined strengths and leadership in driving innovations, and it also confirms our shared commitment to customer excellence. By bringing together top talent and cutting-edge technology, Tageos and Fedrigoni share a firm ambition to enable and accelerate groundbreaking innovations that will shape industries today and for years to come.’ 

Matthieu Picon, CEO, Tageos, stated: ‘RFID technology has reached a pivotal moment — it is already widely adopted and successfully used across many key applications. Our continuous drive for innovation will help us develop cutting-edge products while meeting the evolving needs of our customers. The new Innovation Center of Excellence will provide customers and market partners with even greater access to our resources and support them to quickly realize their objectives, integrate latest technologies and leverage them to reduce time-to-market and gain a competitive advantage. It also underlines our strong commitment to true technological innovation, performance and sustainability in RFID and wireless IoT, as well as the development of next-generation products that will shape the future.’