Guest Editorial
Australia RFID Applications
The Australian market for RFID is currently small in the global landscape. Although interest in RFID
is growing, shipments in Australia have not soared to the levels suppliers
previously expected. The uptake of RFID in Australia has been slow to date
because there has been no pressure on Australian industry to implement RFID
technology to comply with government legislation and or market channel
requirements such as Wal-Mart. High cost and uncertainty of ROI, lack of
education and skill-set, privacy and security concerns from consumers and
difficulty in integration with back-end segments are the key factors that
have restrained the growth in the market. The industry is taking a number of
steps to raise awareness, develop standards, drive adoption, and lower
prices in the RFID market. Emerging developments in standards, advances in
the ultra high frequency technology and growth in new applications using
RFID technology are expected to drive growth in Australia in the future.
RFID is used in five main applications in Australia – Security/ access
control, animal tracking, transportation, manufacturing and logistics and
other applications, with security/access control and animal identification
being the main applications comprising 60 percent of the market.
RFID Applications Market in
2004
Source: Frost & Sullivan
Security/access control is the largest segment. The key
applications in this segment include library, Government managed public IDs,
parking lot security and access, vehicle theft protection,
personnel/employee access tracking, shoplifting prevention and electronic
article surveillance. With building access already installed in several
sites, this segment is relatively mature and expected to grow at a slow rate
in the future compared to other applications.With the Australian livestock sector’s dependence on beef
exports (70 percent), animal tracking is the largest RFID application in
terms of the number of passive RFID tags and second largest application in
value terms. Australia has adopted National Livestock Identification Scheme
(NLIS), which is the first and the largest implementation of RFID for animal
tracking in the world, making it a pioneer user of RFID for animal tracking.
The NLIS is an enhancement of the tail tag and National Vendor Declaration (NVD)
system and it moves the nation’s traceability systems from primarily
herd-based identification to electronic, individual animal identification. NLIS
has mandated all the states to have an individual animal identification
system in operation. By July 2005, farmers in New South Wales, Western
Australia and South Australia are required to tag cattle and by 2007 almost
all states in Australia will have their animals tagged. Sheep, pigs and
domestic dog tagging will also drive growth in the future.
Manufacturing & logistics and transportation though small
at this point in time, have a huge potential in Australia with supply chain
management likely to be driving the market in the future for asset tracking.
Recently GS1 Australia has been granted national scientific license for RFID
implementation projects to use RFID readers at 4 Watts, using frequency
between 920 MHz to 925 MHz that will be able to support faster read ranges.
Unlike other parts of the world, retailing has not been the overriding
leader in Australia. Coles Myer, Woolworths and a few other retailers have
piloted RFID systems but not advanced them. Australia’s adoption of RFID
will be more gradual, focusing first on logistics assets like pallets,
crates and returnable assets rather than consumer items.
With the coming up of a number of expressways installing
Electronic Toll Collection (ETC), transportation application is also
expected to grow. These include Sydney Cross city tunnel, M7, the line
curve, M4 East and M2 to S3. Victorian Government has announced an
A$100,000 grant to establish a RFID cluster group, Vic RFID Action, to
establish Victoria as Australia’s major transport hub.
Besides the above mentioned end-user applications, RFID systems are used
in several other applications. In sports, RFID is used to time
athletes and in horse and automobile racing. In the medical field,
RFID is used for non-invasive patient monitoring, tracking of infants in
hospitals and tracking the location of medical equipment and
pharmaceuticals.
RFID is also adopted in commercial laundries such as
hospitals, Star City casino as it is able to withstand extreme temperatures,
humidity and chemicals compared to barcodes. Other emerging applications in
Australia are prisoner tracking and baggage handling etc.
Conclusion : The Future of RFID Applications in Australia
For the RFID technology to experience rapid growth in
short to medium term in Australia the groundwork has to take place in the
next one to two years and several factors are required for RFID to really
take off in Australia. First, the RFID tags and readers have to
demonstrate high level of reliability and affordability to attract the
Australian businessmen. Secondly, the systems integration for RFID
compliance should be easy and RFID practices should be culturally accepted
across the supply chain of manufacturing companies. Thirdly, the
standards for RFID should gain industry-wide acceptance to enable
interoperability and economies of scale in manufacturing, although this may
take a few years. Privacy and security concerns should be
proactively addressed and government support will be critical.
Only then will the majority of the industries using bar code technology will
experience pressure to revolutionize to RFID technology.
This article was authored by Parul Oswal, Research Analyst, Smart Cards
and Auto-ID, Frost & Sullivan Asia Pacific. Frost &
Sullivan (www.frost.com) is an international growth consulting company that
monitors the Southeast Asian and Australian Auto ID and Smart Cards industry
for market trends, market measurements and strategies.
The ongoing research complements a series of research
publications, and supports industry participants with customized consulting
solutions. Using our Market Engineering methodology, our global team of
analysts and consultants track over 200 key industries. Visit us at
www.frost.com.
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