Avery Dennison Smartrac has announced the launch of the AD Maxdura tire tag, which it says is one of the most advanced embedded UHF RFID tags for the tire industry.

Every year, some three billion units are manufactured globally, and RFID is increasingly being adopted by all leading tire manufacturers. Michelin, for instance, has announced it is fitting RFID sensor tags to all its tires by 2023, and countries such as China are looking to make its use mandatory.

The AD Maxdura tire tag leverages Avery Dennison’s material science and RF design expertise to provide information into the lifecycle of the tire, enabling a range of environmental and safety features. The tag is attached to the tires directly during vulcanization and becomes fully connected from day one. This means the tag enables track and trace through the logistic chain, and also makes it much easier to identify tires at warehouses and dealerships. Stock counts can be performed almost instantly, tire assembly and fitting errors can be reduced, and it becomes a powerful defense against counterfeiting. The AD Maxdura tire tag will also detail the exact materials used to manufacture the tire, making their reuse easier and providing valuable information to recycling centres.

The AD Maxdura tire tag features stable performance over a wide frequency area, with a long distance read range of up to 11 meters, depending on mounting place and tire type. Measuring 43 mm x 2.0 mm x 2.00 mm it has one of the smallest form factors of any embedded tire tags and is compliant with the GS1 Class 1 Gen 2 and ISO 18000-6C protocol.

Lauri Hyytinen, market development manager, automotive at Avery Dennison Smartrac, comments, “The automotive industry is in the biggest upheaval in its more than 130-year history. Avery Dennison is working with all the leading tire manufacturers as they turn to RFID. The benefits are clear, not least in terms of safety and the ability to fully track the lifecycle of the three billion manufactured each year. However, we have designed the AD Maxdura tire tag to be future-proof for a wide range of forthcoming uses, which Avery Dennison Smartrac is already working on with OEM partners in the automotive industry. This includes logistics solutions and brand protection applications.”

Samples of the AD Maxdura tire tag are available from today, and high volume orders are possible from mid Q4 2021.