New Thinfilm Facility to Boost NFC Tag Production To the Billions

With the rise of social media and online review platforms, brands have to fight through increased noise to reach a consumer. However, as more shoppers visit retail locations armed with their smartphone, smart packaging can help brand owners relay their product information directly to a consumers’ palm — without the interference.

Despite its relative infancy, smart packaging innovations have captured the attention of the packaging industry, and soon, a substantial increase in the production of NFC chips will make its way to San Jose, Calif. Thinfilm has announced that it is moving its U.S. headquarters in San Jose into a new facility, which will feature a roll-to-roll manufacturing line, allowing its NFC chip production capacity to increase from 10 to 12 million per year into the billions.

The SpeedTap NFC tag from Thinfilm will be one of the products produced at the company's new facility. Photo via of Thinfilm.

“Leveraging the smartphone and having our NFC chips in every day products so that consumers, as they’re either in store, at the point of purchase, on the go, or even at home during the consumption phase of that product, will be able to tap on the packaging and engage with the brand directly,” Bill Cummings, Thinfilm’s senior VP, corporate communications, says. “We see that as being a very valuable value proposition that’s gaining traction in the market place.”

Currently, Cummings explains that Thinfilm produces NFC chips via a sheet-based process. He states that producing these chips in quantities of 10 to 12 million annually has been adequate for providing customers with enough chips to conduct field trials, but not enough for a large-scale release.

However, as interest in, and demand for, the technology increased, along with an increase in Thinfilm’s U.S. employee-base, Cummings says the company realized it needed to ramp up production and increase its physical space.

On Thursday, June 15, Thinfilm will host an open house at its new location in San Jose. Cummings says the new facility, which was previously owned by Qualcomm, provides a substantial increase in space, a state-of-the-art clean room for electronics manufacturing, and will house the roll-to-roll equipment to boost the company’s production to billions of NFC chips.

“As we gained more and more traction in the marketplace with large consumer brands, we saw that our capacity was sufficient to be able to supply chips for field trials with these large customers, but we knew we were going to have to ramp up our manufacturing capacity and capabilities significantly,” Cummings says.

The two NFC products Thinfilm manufactures are its SpeedTap and OpenSense technologies. Cummings explains that each of these products provides a unique ID, which is laser-etched into the chip as it is manufactured. Because of the unique ID, any product with one of these NFC tags can be tracked as an individual unit, Cummings says.

This capability allows consumers to interact with an individual product, whereas previously, they may have been limited to learning about a brand’s product line in general.

“If we’re talking about bottles of olive oil, from a tracking standpoint and from a marketing standpoint, as brands start to engage with consumers, it really is about the bottle of olive oil and not a bottle of olive oil, because you do have that unique ID down to the individual item level,” Cummings says.

While smart packaging is still in its early stages, Cummings says he has found that interest in the marketplace is increasing, whether it be from mid-size brands, large brands or digital agencies. And with its capabilities extending beyond manufacturing, Cummings says Thinfilm is well-positioned to capitalize on the rise of connected packaging applications.

“Many brands can go out into the market and buy NFC chips from one vendor, they can go to another label integrator to help get those NFC tags onto their products and then they can go to a software provider to get the software back end,” Cummings says. “As far as Thinfilm, we are the only one-stop shop in the market right now.”