Tesco signs up for 20,000 RFID antennae and readers

Tesco has put in the retail sector's largest ever publicly announced order for EPC RFID readers in the supply chain - 4,000 of them will be in use across the country.

The supermarket giant has signed the deal with ADT, which will supply the 4,000 readers and 16,000 antennae by autumn of this year, with 1,300 UK Tesco supermarkets and 35 distribution centres getting the tracking equipment.

The supermarket chain has already announced it signed up OATSystems to provide its RFID infrastructure.

Tesco is planning a wider rollout of the technology and may eventually take RFID technology to its international business in the future.

Although Tesco has trialled item level tracking at two of its stores, with razor blades and DVDs, the new deal will see the equipment fitted onto dock doors and merchandise receipt points, and will be used to trace cases and pallets of goods, rather than individual items.

A new report from Larstan Business Reports surveyed over 600 supply chain and IT execs and describes the sector as a "major driving force in the adoption of RFID".

It found that 35 per cent of the firms questioned said they had already implemented advanced infrastructure to support RFID deployment.

Retailers were also more convinced the technology would benefit them then other businesses - 83 per cent of retail firms said they agreed or strongly agreed that having partners and suppliers use the technology would benefit them, compared to 68 per cent of manufacturers and 50 per cent of logistics or transportation firms.

But while the firms queried might have been enthusiastic about the technology into the supply chain, 78 per cent of retailers also predicted it would mean significantly overhauling their infrastructure.

Unsurprisingly, with RFID deployments bringing with them a spend on re-engineering, 94 per cent of the retailers said they demanded a quick ROI.

For the retail sector, it seems, while RFID may generate a lot of enthusiasm, it doesn't seem to be generating many concrete rollout plans - just five per cent of retail firms are planning to implement the technology within the next three to six months.