In our January edition of Authentication & Brand News™, we asked: ‘could 2025 be the year for smart and sustainable IoT labels?’ The question was prompted by the unveiling of new smart label solutions from Giesecke+Devrient (G+D) and Linxens. The solutions are emblematic of a larger shift in logistics and authentication: moving from traditional scan-based systems to sensing-based networks.
Since January, a number of new developments in this area have come to our attention. These developments venture beyond barcodes and QR codes, offering continuous real-time updates on product location, condition, and handling. This not only enhances operational efficiency but also opens powerful new avenues for product authentication and fraud detection.
Royal Mail (UK) has claimed a world-first deployment of postage stamp-sized smart tags – developed by Israeli startup Wiliot – onto the rolling carts it uses to transport letters and packages across the country.
Nathan Preston, technology director for strategy, innovation and data at Royal Mail, said the carrier needed better visibility into its operations to help cut shipping costs and deliver more items on time. Royal Mail previously tracked its delivery vehicles but had limited visibility into what was on each truck.
As a next step, the postal service plans to scale this approach to high-value parcels such as electronics and cash.
The Wiliot devices cost $0.30 each, making them more palatable for many conventional parcel operations. However, other tracking devices can cost as much as $50 per piece, limiting their use to more industrial applications and for shipping high-value goods.
AT&T has unveiled a smart label that uses cellular networks to transmit real- time tracking. The telecommunications company said manufacturing and logistics companies use these labels to track high-value shipments. The devices cost up to $50 per piece and $25-$30 each in bulk quantities. They provide precise location updates and also include sensors for temperature, humidity, and shock monitoring.
Meanwhile, package delivery company UPS, provides a tracking service to healthcare services that uses technology such as RFID and cellular networks to track shipments to within 3 metres of their location.
During the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, UPS used these technologies to maintain ultracold temperatures in transit. Today, its RFID tags help prevent misloads in parcel vans by triggering alerts when items are loaded incorrectly. CEO Carol Tomé summarised the transformation: We’re shifting from a scanning-based system to a sensing-based network’.
Riva FedEx has also been ramping up its tracking capabilities. It now has a service called SenseAware that offers live internal package tracking information via Bluetooth-enabled sensors.
Cainiao, the logistics arm of Alibaba Cainiao has emerged as a major force in smart tracking. The company sold over 100 million RFID tags in under two years, and refers to RFID as the ‘third generation of identification technology’ after barcodes and QR codes.
Beyond parcel tracking for Alibaba, Cainiao has worked with McDonald’s China on the ‘One Box One Code’ project, exploring RFID utilisation in the food industry. The development of this system began in 2022 and it has already been deployed at various upstream factories, logistics centres, and restaurants, with full-scale testing completed in McDonald’s outlets.
With ‘One Box One Code’, McDonald’s China assigns a unique digital identifier to each box, which has increased operational efficiency by over 40%. In the next phase, it is working on integrating more than 100 supplier factories into the system nationwide.
Cainiao has also built southern Vietnam’s largest AI-automated sorting centre, equipped with RFID-powered infrastructure. The system uses AI and digital solutions to process parcels of various sizes with an accuracy rate of over 99%, marking a milestone in logistics digitisation in Southeast Asia.
In another case, Roambee’s smart labels have transformed parcel logistics for Japanese delivery giant Yamato Transport, which ships over 2.3 billion parcels annually. The labels are equipped with sensors which continuously monitor the location, environment, and condition of the parcels, capturing real-time data.
The labels use cellular networks (eg. 4G/5G), Bluetooth, or wi-fi to automatically send the data to a cloud platform. This process requires no manual scanning or intervention, eliminating the need for infrastructure-heavy setups like RFID readers.
A major ongoing concern in supply chain security is ‘strategic theft’, where sophisticated criminals exploit stolen identities from carriers and logistics brokers to reroute and steal freight with alarming speed and precision. According to Sharath Muddaiah, Head of Global Portfolio Strategy for IoT Solutions at G+D, around $700 million worth of cargo shipments were stolen in the US alone in 2023. By integrating tamper-detection and environmental monitoring capabilities, smart labels ensure the integrity of high- value and sensitive shipments.
According to Carly West, an analyst at Gartner, there’s increasing demand for granular insights—not just tracking containers or delivery trucks, but understanding the movement of each product in real time. This trend is pushing logistics providers to adopt smarter tags and digital tracking solutions that surpass the limitations of barcodes. From Royal Mail’s container insights to McDonald’s digital IDs on food boxes, the shift is clear: sensing is replacing scanning.
