2988: How Does Digital Transformation Foster Sustainability in Business?

[00:00:01] Have you ever wondered how everyday items could have their own unique digital voice? How could this technology enable businesses to achieve both sustainability and efficiency in their supply chains? Well today here on Tech Talks Daily, I'm going to be finding out more about the fascinating world of RFID

[00:00:23] technology and digital transformation across this entire space. And my guest today is Ricardo Lobo. He's the CEO of a company called BeOnTag and Ricardo leads the company that has pioneered innovations in RFID and created solutions that connect physical products to the digital world,

[00:00:44] not to mention driving significant advancements in sustainability from the groundbreaking Echo tags to the new production facilities in Dayton, Ohio BeOnTag is at the forefront of technological innovation and today I want you to join me in exploring how BeOnTag is helping businesses achieve their environmental goals while also

[00:01:08] increasing supply chain visibility and embrace the future of digital transformation. Before we welcome our guest onto the podcast today though, delivering daily content to 140,000 of you wonderful monthly listeners across the globe is no small feat.

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[00:02:09] saving you both time and money. You can step into the future of secure managed file transfer with Kiteworks today by visiting Kiteworks.com to get started. That's Kiteworks.com to get started today. But now it's time to dive into today's fascinating conversation with my guest.

[00:02:27] So buckle up and hold on tight as I beam your ears all the way to Milan where Ricardo is waiting to join us today. So a massive warm welcome to the show Ricardo, can you tell everyone listening a little about who you are and what you do?

[00:02:43] It's a real privilege and honor to be here and be able to talk about our company, Biontec. My name is Ricardo Lobo, I'm the CEO of Biontec. I've been in this role for the last nine years.

[00:02:54] I'm an engineer by training, worked a little bit in fast moving consumer goods and in finance actually before joining our company. And now back to more technical and managerial things over these last nine years. So very happy to be here in Biontec.

[00:03:10] We are a company present in over 40 countries with over 20 factories spread out across the world. And we basically started off as a label stock company. So doing everything that will become a label one day. And so a lot of barcode labels and with the advent of RFID technology

[00:03:29] and actually putting chips inside of tags, we pioneered in the RFID industry. So connecting items, so creating a digital voice for everyday items, connecting them to the cloud, to the RPs of this world. And we play a key role in that, in transforming these day-to-day items

[00:03:48] to having their digital passports, their digital lives. And I'm so glad you said that because I must admit my next question was going to be Biontec. What's that about? What's the name? What's the story behind the company? And straight away, I think all that makes sense.

[00:04:02] I think that the name came a little bit about that, right? We went through some M&As and we were acquiring some other companies and we had to come up with one name that represented all of us together. And for sure, we were making tags.

[00:04:20] But there's much more to it. So we kind of came up with this Biontec thing to signal that we're doing things that are way beyond the normal tag, right? That's kind of how the name came up. As the tag themselves are completely changing in past years

[00:04:37] and are going to change even further in the future. I love that. One of the things I try and do every day on this podcast is get people thinking differently about areas that surround them, that are dominated by tech, but they don't associate with tech.

[00:04:50] And I think those barcodes or tags, etc., is a great example of that. So at Biontec, what would you say your core mission is in this digital transformation of this space? Yes, absolutely. So basically we want, when you think about the label business,

[00:05:07] we want to allow companies to present their products in their best possible form. But as we moved into chips inside of labels, we're actually trying to enable this digital transformation journey that the companies are going through. So having more inventory assertiveness,

[00:05:27] being able to know exactly what's in stores, allowing omnichannel, allowing shorter supply chains, less waste through the supply chains. I mean, but ultimately what we try to sum it all up is providing everyday items with its digital voice and that will unlock all these other things, right?

[00:05:46] So companies started adopting the technology for inventory accounts. And all of a sudden you can also do in the future self checkouts. You can get rid of the security added, you know, those hard disks because it's already built inside the tag.

[00:06:04] You can start having customer engagement because with NFC and dual frequency tags, you can tap with your phone and that will lock authentication. Also, customer engagement for marketing purposes, a myriad of things, right? And now I would say with the digital product passport

[00:06:21] that is actually a EU regulation, it allows for the whole life of that item to be connected right with the item. So what it was made out of, where it was made out of, when and then be able to track it throughout its lifecycle

[00:06:37] and then even allowing secondary markets, peer to peer transactions later on and the disposal of them at the end of it. And beyond tag, you've been a pioneer in the RFID industry since I think 2005. And for anyone listening that's new to this space, RFID stands for radio frequency

[00:06:57] identification. It refers to a wireless system that's comprised of two components, tags and readers. And the reader is a device that has one or more antennas that emit radio waves and receive signals back from that RFID tag.

[00:07:11] But I'm curious, is someone right in the heart of this space? How have you seen the role of RFID technology evolve in recent years? What unique values does Beyond Tag bring to this field, would you say, here in this AI and digital age that we find ourselves?

[00:07:28] Sure. First and foremost, the big power of the RFID tag is that, as you mentioned, it's passive, right? It doesn't have a battery. It's powered by the radio, be it UHF or NFC. We work with all frequencies.

[00:07:43] And so that's a very cheap way of giving you a lot of data, right? Because you don't need to beep one per one. You can read many at the same time. You don't need light to read them.

[00:07:55] You can read a full palette of thousands of items in the same time. And then I would say that it started back in the day, a lot about inventory assertiveness and being able to count quickly. So you would have data in your ERP, suppose a retailer,

[00:08:12] but that not necessarily reflected what was in the distribution center at the shop. Right. So with RFID, you can count them that much easier and more frequently. And then you know for sure what's at the shop. So if you want to enable, for instance, omni-channel

[00:08:26] so that the e-commerce can pick up from the store, well, you got to know what's in the store or else they would pick up and it wouldn't be there. So that kind of things are enabled by this technology.

[00:08:37] Also, for instance, sub-checkout, because you can go and put everything in a bin that has radio frequency enabled, and then it already knows, pops up exactly what's there, gives you the price. Then even if it's not self-checkout, it allows for faster checkout

[00:08:52] because the person, the shopper would need to beep all of the items. So all of these things help. Nowadays, it's moving towards since you have a unique ID for the item, well, then you can know all the story of the item itself.

[00:09:07] So all these are the things that I was mentioning. So peer-to-peer transactions. So, for instance, luxury items, you bought a very expensive, let's say, purse. You want to resell it because it has a lot of value and you want to, let's say, buy it.

[00:09:21] But is it a real one? Is it the first transaction, the second transaction? It was impossible to know before, right? You would need an expert eye or something. Now this technology enables exactly that type of thing.

[00:09:33] And we've seen it being adopted by things that were very hard to count and had value as the technology at the time was more expensive. So it's apparel and high luxury apparel. But now with it becoming much more affordable, we're seeing it in all sorts of

[00:09:50] apparel, non-apparel retail, and it's moving to parcels and services. It's moving to industrials, to auto parts, cars. It's also unlocking toll roads. You can have a passive UHF tag to open toll roads and pay for parking or gas.

[00:10:08] And you can have it also interacting with the end user, allowing these things, these other business models, renting, rebuying, repurchasing, and all those things. And when I was doing a little research on you before you came on the podcast,

[00:10:21] I know sustainability is a huge focus for Beyond Tag as well. So are you able to share some of the steps that Beyond Tag is taking to minimize your environmental impact and also help your customers achieve their ESG goals?

[00:10:36] Because it's such a huge topic right now, isn't it? Absolutely. And I think we always took this very seriously. So the way, when we started like four years ago in this journey, we really wanted to have first and foremost our program.

[00:10:51] So we wanted to inventory our emissions, our impacts, and really set targets for those. Right. And that's exactly what we did. We signed the UN compound and we set the targets for waste management. The creation and launching of sustainable products, our diversity goals and whatnot.

[00:11:13] And we're delivering against these goals that we set for 2030. But you brought up a point that is exactly where we focus a lot on. We want to enable our customers to hit their goals. Right. So we want to launch sustainable products to help them do exactly that.

[00:11:29] So the RFID technology by in essence, it's already helping because it's allowing for what we mentioned before, short inventories, more assertive inventories, so less risk of obsolete sensitive things being thrown out or missed cases and everything can be shortened. Right.

[00:11:46] So just that is a big, let's say saving of resources. But we want to do that in a more sustainable way as well. So we are, for instance, in the label stock side, we have the line list technology, which is basically self-winding the label so that they don't

[00:12:01] have the line that you have to throw away. In an RFID, we have the epo tag that is something completely revolutionary that is taking the PT out of medium of weight that is the inlay inside and reducing greatly the impact as well.

[00:12:15] And we know that the companies need data that moves the needle. So we're working as well a lot with LCA. So life cycle assessments of these items so that they know for sure that what they're buying is actually helping to meet those goals because the goal now,

[00:12:31] they're serious stuff, right? You got to actually have data that backs what you're doing. Right. So we work a lot on that so that we enable them to do that. And I also read that you've recently launched the eco tag.

[00:12:45] So just to bring to life everything that we're talking about here and help listeners understand how it might work in their world, how does this innovation, this eco tag support sustainability in the fashion and retail industry is any use cases or examples you can share around. Absolutely.

[00:13:01] So the eco tag, every tag or FID tag usually has the PT. So a plastic inlay with aluminium antenna, that's where the chip gets bonded and then that gets inserted in the normal label. It can be a stitchable nylon label or it can be a sticker label. Right.

[00:13:18] But our technology, we basically print the antenna on the back of the face stock of the paper. So it becomes fully paper-based and not with plastics anymore. So for every thousand labels, 15 little PT bottles that you drink water out of that gets saved. Right.

[00:13:34] So when you're talking about the programs that we work on with now, when I started in the industry 19 years ago, there were millions, hundreds of thousands of millions. Now we're talking about programs that use millions of tags. So imagine the impact that taking the plastic out has.

[00:13:50] So we're backing that up with the LCAs. We're working on those to enable our clients to use that technology. This technology is already live in the market. We have people in the luxury world using it, people on the mass apparel world using it.

[00:14:04] And now we're trying to introduce it to parcels and logistics as well. Right. So really helping the clients with that. And of course it needs to have the competitive price, the same price for cheap brand, it needs to perform the same way.

[00:14:17] And that's exactly what this technology can do. And I'm talking to you in the UK, you're talking to me from Milan in Italy today. And I was also reading, you've got a new facility in Finland that is described as beyond tags, global R&D center of excellence.

[00:14:34] I'm not sure how much you could tell me about that, but any teasers on the kind of innovations that we can expect to come from this, sir? So we were fortunate throughout the company that we were originally in, the

[00:14:46] ones that we acquired came with fantastic people and a lot of technology. And we were able to bring that life together in Tampere. Tampere, Finland has a big history of being a hotbed for radio frequency to all the likes of Nokia back in the day.

[00:15:01] So a lot of expertise there on radio frequency and that's where we concentrated our R&D efforts. Of course we have R&D resources in our plants, be it in China and in Brazil or in the US or here in Italy, but there's the hub, right?

[00:15:17] And what we expect and what they're already doing, and we're very proud of our team, they're working on more frequency. So as we move from UHF to dual frequency, meaning that you have also an NFC

[00:15:31] frequency in the tag so that we can talk to cell phones because now all the cell phones have NFC readers. But we're also working with Bluetooth Low Energy, which is cutting edge because everybody has Bluetooth on laptops and also on phones.

[00:15:45] So that allows it to read from far away, just like the UHF technology, but without requiring investment in a UHF network because you're already paid for the laptops or everything that it can read, cell phones that can read Bluetooth, right? So for sure we're working on different frequencies.

[00:16:04] And the other thing that we're working on is different media. That's super important for RFID because we're trying to connect everyday items to the cloud and give them a digital voice and the devil's in the details, some will require a sticker.

[00:16:17] Some will require a sticker that can read through metal that we'll need to have with the electric phones. Some will require to be embedded like in what we are developing for tires that need to be inside and resist the pressure and heat that are involved

[00:16:32] in making a tire and then resisting the road for 200,000 miles or whatnot. So all these different media that we have to make and insert the chips in. So this material science part is also part of what they're doing there.

[00:16:46] Uh, in an, in allowing the technology to be spread across different user cases, different verticals, let's say. So, and also, and also of course, trying to make these cheaper, thinner, uh, easier to adopt because we want, of course, to massify the adoption and

[00:17:03] then needs to be ever more sustainable, ever more cost competitive to allow it to, to, to, to hit more everyday items. Right. A hundred percent with you on that. And beyond tag is also expanding your production capabilities with a new facility in Dayton, Ohio, I read too.

[00:17:20] So I'm curious what strategic advantages does that facility bring and how will it help enhance your overall production capacity yet? Anything you can share around that and what this means to you? Oh, for sure. So, so as we're talking about everyday items, uh, people need just in time

[00:17:40] deliveries, uh, they need short supply chain chains themselves. Right. So we need to produce on every single continent, uh, and we need to produce competitively. Right. So, uh, we had already production facilities everywhere, but in North America. So that was something fundamental for us to engage in large.

[00:17:58] US based programs. And that's exactly why Dayton Ohio is being built. So it's an $80 million investment and we'll have the label stock production integrated with RFID sticker tag production in the same facility. So there will be vertical integration, the best possible, uh, cost structure.

[00:18:18] Uh, and we will be able to engage large programs in mass, uh, retail and parcels and logistics, which is what, what is moving the needle and requiring all this just in time deliveries and of course a great cost.

[00:18:31] Uh, so that's, I think what, uh, we hope, uh, uh, and we're working towards that, that Ohio will bring us. Uh, and we're very excited about this project. It's the biggest project we ever designed in one goal, uh, in our company.

[00:18:44] And with the escalating sustainability and traceability requirements that we've talked about and all these things that are facing businesses today, how do you at beyond tag help your clients balance those demands with the need for efficiency and profitability?

[00:18:59] I would imagine it is a much trickier balance than people might realize. Well, uh, and that's, well, I would say a couple of things. There's a couple of angles to, to that question. So first the technology itself allows for savings after an investment.

[00:19:17] So we got to help bridge them, uh, uh, to clients explaining the ROI, explain the user cases in other places, because for sure, once you, that's the point, right, once you invest in the technology, you're going to get

[00:19:28] eventually you're going to fix the first pin point and inventory assertiveness. But you're going to also enable it on self checkouts or customer engagement for your marketing department. And that's going to be paid for because you already did the hard work of putting up all the infrastructure, right?

[00:19:44] So that's one thing. And we got to make that, uh, um, process the most seamless as possible, be it from the solutions, uh, that we do in the cost. Um, so that's one point. And then for sure, you got to make, uh, um, the tag itself, the

[00:20:00] chips, the cheaper as possible. And the technology is involved, is involved in that direction. And in past years, it's like everything in the chip industry, the chips are becoming smaller, cheaper, more powerful, more, more sensible, and we're finding

[00:20:15] ways to make the tags, uh, also more competitively so that they can be adopted. And I would say that there are regulations, uh, um, that, that are also coming in place, for instance, like digital product passport that is

[00:20:29] happening in their opinion, uh, but again, it's a, it is a cost as if you never did it, but then there's a lot of data you get out of it and a lot of return you get

[00:20:38] out of it and we're trying to showcase exactly that and also help them with the software related to that so that the adoption is seamless for, for, for the customers. Right. And, uh, um, when we develop something like the echo tag, I would say to the

[00:20:53] final point is that we know, we know exactly what it is, right? Because we are also a manufacturing company in a software, but we know that it has to come at equal or lower cost and equal or better performance or else it just won't move forward.

[00:21:07] And that's an in going position for us. And that's what we try to bring, uh, towards the market, right? So that we are bringing solutions that are not something crazy at all. They're actually something that will enable them to adopt with less impact

[00:21:21] and costs so that they can help them that balance that it is indeed tricky for any large corporation when they're going to buy millions of tags, it's a cost just right there. Right. But then we've got to make all this returns happen, uh, and show them how it

[00:21:36] can be done and also make it the cheapest way possible for people to adopt. Right. And one of the things I love about beyond tag is you can't put you in a pigeon hole and say, well, this is what you do because you're working with sector

[00:21:50] leaders and operate in such diverse sectors. We've talked about a lot of different areas today, but it's also including payments, smart cities and transport and so many other different areas. So just to bring to life everything that we've talked about today, are there any

[00:22:06] specific examples you can share of, of how your solutions have maybe transformed operations in some of these industries? So, yeah. So for instance, um, uh, the, the, the subway tickets, right. Uh, that's one example of, they used to be just paper.

[00:22:21] And then with the, the, the magnetic strike, of course, now they are radio frequency enabled in many cities around the world and we help many cities in the process. So we can mention Venice for instance, where the Bapuretos use our technology,

[00:22:35] Dubai, Glasgow, um, and, and then you allow for all that data from different types of, uh, uh, fair, uh, collection models to be possible. So a week, a month, uh, discounts for elderly or for military, or so all that

[00:22:52] information can be stored in a title can last for longer. And of course, much faster, precise. Cop that less, uh, operation on the spindle, right? Which it seems not important, but when you have a lot of people trying to pass through the spindles is actually very important.

[00:23:08] I think about, uh, the Olympics now or events that have a lot of people that helps, uh, also sporting events and whatnot. We have, for instance, tall roads. So we are in the biggest tall road programs across the world, uh, where you

[00:23:23] allow the car to, you know, open tall and then, you know, avoid the transaction with money at the, um, in a much cheaper way than with the battery box, right? Doing it with passive technology, which technology we are, for instance, uh,

[00:23:37] with pods, uh, the, the, the luxury brand doing leather goods in apparel, uh, doing the digital product passport, uh, for them, uh, so allowing them to, to start, uh, with, um, The, that type of operation.

[00:23:52] So the software or that they need how to embed it inside, uh, the, the, the, the, the purse, that kind of thing with Bulgari, for instance, where we're helping them with the customer interactions. So authentication, and then the customer being able to, to tap the item and

[00:24:09] then that opening up, uh, promotions, marketing contact, uh, and of course the authentication, which is super important for the luxury sector. We could talk about oval, for instance, where we do, um, they have a program that we put already a tag when they're forming the chassis, and then.

[00:24:28] And that has already all the information of everything that needs to be in that car, what type of leather seat, what type of sound, so they don't get the just in time wrong and the avoid mistakes on the line of production, right? So that enables for, for better.

[00:24:43] Uh, car construction and now we're seeing big things happening in tires and parcels, and that's where we're moving next, I would say. So it's really a broad, uh, a broad spectrum. And that's, I think the exciting part of our company that we get to talk to all

[00:24:58] these different sectors, uh, helping them make a better operations in general. Right. Beautiful. That's a great moment to end on, but before I let you go, thank you for sharing your valuable insights and bringing this topic to life today.

[00:25:14] But well, I'm actually trying to do something for you here. And that is some of the biggest names in business VC funding and tech have either been guests or maybe even listened to this podcast.

[00:25:23] So is there a person that you'd love to have a private breakfast or lunch with and why, because he or she might just get to hear this and I'd love to see if we manifest something as a little, thank you for joining us on the podcast today.

[00:25:36] Who would it be? Oh, well, I don't know if he would be listening and it's really possible. It's a high stake, I would say, but I'm, uh, admiring a lot in past years and, uh, trying to read a book about, but you know, from what I can get

[00:25:52] from Google and from business articles, I would really like to meet, uh, Morris Chang from TSMC. I think the, the, his life's up of, you know, having a very solid electrical engineer chip designer career in Texas instruments and starting

[00:26:07] system C and a good stiff tease, uh, and bringing it to become the biggest, uh, chip producer in the world. The 34 years later is, is short. I mean, I never seen something like that in terms of. Entrepreneurship later on in life and so effectively in

[00:26:23] transforming an industry worldwide. I would love to, to know more about how, how he did it and how he thinks about, uh, business in life. Uh, for sure. Right. Uh, that, that would be one that I could think about. Yeah, that is an absolutely fantastic choice.

[00:26:39] I'm going to throw that into the ether, into the universe. Let's see what we can manifest together there. And I do wonder with the six degrees of separation thing, maybe between us,

[00:26:50] we can, uh, there'll be a guy that knows a guy or a woman that knows a woman. We'll make something happen. Hopefully. And for anyone listening that just wants to find out more information about beyond

[00:26:59] tag, maybe they've got a few questions they'd like to ask, uh, where can they find your team online or find out more about anything we talked about? For sure. Our website, uh, we just launched a new website, so it has our contacts and we answer them very well.

[00:27:15] And also through LinkedIn, uh, our LinkedIn profile, we also answer everything that people ask there. So it's quite actually easy to get to us, uh, and ask questions. And, uh, because it is, right. It is a digital transformation journey.

[00:27:27] Uh, and people need to understand before they make up their minds and see if it's for them and how could it apply and what are what's involved with all that? So, so we do that's bread and butter for us. That's exactly what we do.

[00:27:41] We try to really, you know, start in the beginning, cracking the issues and helping the customers throughout that journey. Well, I'll have links to everything you mentioned there to make it easier for people to find you and ask those questions.

[00:27:55] And I'd love to hear what people thought about our conversation today. For me personally, I love how BeyondTag is this digital transformation enabler for businesses offering this wide variety of data and IoT solutions to help your customers gain this almost real-time understanding of their

[00:28:12] supply chain and product life cycles. But also I think something very important we discussed today, sustainable growth through impactful solutions, like many involved in the fashion and retail industries, for example, you're taking steps to minimize the impact on the

[00:28:27] planet and in a time or at a time where we're talking about ESG scores, it is such a big topic and just thank you for shining a light on it today. Really appreciate your time. No, thank you. Thank you for the opportunity. Thank you for the time.

[00:28:40] Thank you for listening. And, uh, we would love to come back in the future and talk more as things evolve on our side and we'll have new things to talk about. Wow. What an incredible guy.

[00:28:51] And I love how Ricardo has not only shared his insights today, but learning more about BeyondTag, how they're revolutionizing this RFID industry and helping businesses become more sustainable with that as well. And for me, it's fascinating to see how technology can bridge the gap

[00:29:08] between physical and digital, ultimately enabling greater efficiency, environmental responsibility, and so much more. But for everyone listening, what are your thoughts on the role of RFID in driving sustainability? How do you see digital transformation impacting the future of supply chains?

[00:29:27] If you are very close to this world, maybe you've got very strong opinions, some agreeing with what we said, or maybe you've got a different angle about the entire topic. I'd love for you to contact me directly. Let me know your thoughts by emailing me techblogwriteratoutlook.com.

[00:29:43] Let's keep this conversation going. Remember, connect with me on all social channels, just at Neil C. Hughes. But that's it for today. So please continue to stay curious. Keep exploring these endless possibilities of technology and areas that we don't automatically associate with tech.

[00:29:59] And hopefully that is enough to get you to join me again one more time tomorrow. But thank you for listening today. And until next time, don't be a stranger.