Adopter Spending on UHF RFID Market to Surpass US$10 Billion in 2030, Driven by Expansion into New Verticals and Applications

Item-level tagging with Ultra-High-Frequency (UHF) Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is starting to evolve rapidly. According to a new dataset from global technology intelligence firm ABI Research, spending on UHF RFID technology will surpass US$10 billion in 2030.

“What is changing in the UHF RFID market is that it is expanding into new end markets and applications,” explains Tancred Taylor, Senior Analyst at ABI Research. “While we have seen growth in the use of RFID tags in the apparel retail industry for years, now there are two defining recent changes. The first is data exploitation by companies that have already tagged items with RFID and want to increase their Return on Investment (ROI) by using tag data across more workflows in their operations. The second is end market diversification, as massive programs outside the apparel retail industry ramp up and expand, such as UPS’s Smart Package/Smart Facility (SPSF), Walmart’s item-level supplier mandate, or Kroger’s bakery tagging.”

As a result of this greater breadth of end markets and the more attractive return on investment, ABI Research expects around 118 billion UHF RFID inlays to be shipped in 2030 – nearly 3 times the volume shipped in 2024. Leading inlay manufacturers like Avery Dennison, Arizon, and Tageos have invested significantly over the past two years to expand their production capacity to meet this growing demand. While new retail industries present the most significant opportunity for expansion, UHF RFID is also being embraced by the logistics and mail industries, various manufacturing industries, and service industries like healthcare and hospitality.

Changing operating environments are at the heart of the growing wave of investment. Labor costs and staff retention issues, waste and sustainability targets, theft and inventory shrinkage throughout supply chains, and the desire to offer better customer purchasing experiences are just a few of the reasons driving new projects. More fundamentally, the lower cost and easier implementation of RFID systems, with the growth of off-the-shelf solution providers and integrators, lowers the barrier to entry for customers and removes the need for complex and time-consuming in-house projects. Nedap, SML, and Sensormatic are key examples of suppliers driving the market into its next stage. At the same time, business model innovation continues to come from growing vendors like Radar, Frequentiel, and Xemelgo. Meanwhile, enterprise operational platforms like Oracle, Manhattan Associates, and GreyOrange have RFID-enablement more firmly on their roadmaps.

“Today, RFID is primarily a technology generating value in the retail store. While use cases there will continue to evolve and be critical to a solution’s ROI, the story of RFID will increasingly be unified item-level visibility across the supply chain. As adopters become more advanced in their deployments, the story will shift to product lifecycle visibility, from point of manufacture to point of sale – and even beyond, into returns, resale, and recycling,” concludes Taylor. “After a disappointing start to RFID a couple of decades ago, the next five years look to hold ample promise.”