Several Italian producers are integrating Thinfilm NFC tags into their bottles' labels, enabling purchasers to verify the products' authenticity, as well as access other information.
By Nathaniel Prince
Nov 15, 2016—
Olive oil producers in the Italian region of Tuscany are adopting an RFID-enabled service designed to better inform customers about the finer details of their products. Brands such as Buonamici, La Ranocchiaia, SPO and Il Cavallino are already integrating SpeedTap passive RFID tags created by Thin Film Electronics (Thinfilm) into the labels of their olive oil bottles. The tags utilize Near Field Communication (NFC) RFID technology; smartphones with the ability to read NFC RFID tags can access the cloud and pull up information about the olive oil from the database of a service known as iOlive.
For the iOlive initiative, each bottle's SpeedTap RFID tag is permanently encoded with a unique ID number and a URL. When an NFC-enabled smartphone or tablet is tapped to the bottle's label, the device's internet browser is directed to a special interactive web page related to that bottle of olive oil, thereby causing the browser to display a message verifying the product's authenticity, while also providing tasting notes and other relevant information.
