Primo1D, a leader in embedded RAIN RFID tags for smart objects, announced a new funding round of 15 million euros from major French capital funds. Primo1D now has the necessary means to move to industrial scale and accelerate its development in high-volume markets including fast fashion and professional clothing as well as industrial markets such as tires and electrical cables.

Primo1D's E-Thread™ tag provides a unique, high-durability and plastic-free RFID solution for product identification, authentication and traceability. E-Thread is integrated by customers into their products during their manufacturing processes: it thus inseparable and functional throughout a product’s lifecycle. E-Thread ensures a genuine electronic identification and a durable link between the tagged item and the cloud, where RFID-based data can be stored, managed and shared via the IoT. It responds to the digitization challenges of complex supply chains, Industry 4.0 and new sustainable business models such as the circular economy.

"With this latest funding round, we are entering a phase of strong industrial growth to meet booming customer demand,” said Emmanuel Arène, CEO and Founder of Primo1D. “By providing a non-intrusive digital ID in a miniaturized, unique form factor, our disruptive E-Thread technology transforms products into smart objects. As such it enables new use cases in multiple industry sectors and supports corporate social responsibility initiatives.”

As industries shift towards ‘smarter’ operations, the global UHF segment of the RFID chip market, according to RAIN Alliance Market Research, is undergoing very strong growth (CAGR 30 percent) with more than 20 billion components consumed each year. While large-scale textile distribution is the biggest contributor to this growth, many other industries such as automotive, transport and healthcare are joining in.