Electronics manufacturer NEC and Japanese container company Toyo Seikan Kaisha have developed an RFID-enabled bottle cap prototype, with plans to sell the caps and RFID interrogators for commercial beverage container use in 2008. The cap, embedded with a 2.45 GHz passive RFID tag, would offer bottle companies a means to provide product and promotional information to consumers purchasing items.
By using an in-store RFID interrogator to read a cap’s tag, a customer could learn about a drink’s ingredients before purchasing it.
Matsuo says he expects the savings generated by increased beverage sales due to promotional applications to absorb any added cost related to the RFID tags. He also believes it would be cheaper to use RFID to inform consumers than to print the same information on each cap.
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