Mark Roberti, the founder and editor of RFID Journal, said, “There certainly is a role for pallet suppliers, and a lot of people believe that the manufacturers will eventually begin to push the cost of the tag down to the people below them in the supply chain…Right now all the manufacturers are upset because they are going to put a label that could cost 10-20 cents right now on every box they make. Eventually they are going to go to their packaging companies and say, ‘We want this in the package.’ They’re going to go to their pallet company and say, ‘We want this in the pallet.’
Mark said that he thinks the initial responsibility for putting tags on pallets is going to fall on the product manufacturer and then the packaging supplier will be hit with that responsibility in the future. He added, “In order to meet the rapid deadline that Wal-Mart has set, which is putting tags on pallets and cases by January 2005, the only way to meet that is for the product manufacturers to put the tags on themselves.”
