Creating High Marks

In addition to ribbon innovations, developments have been made in the realm of printer/applicators for smart labels, said Tina Benko, marketing manager at Tharo Systems, Inc. While thermal transfer printers are already being used with smart labels, the future will see more "RFID label printers that are able to print variable information, as well as encode RFID tags," Benko said. "This will combine two processes into one to meet the needs of the supply chain for an RFID encoded shipping label."