Smartrac supplies millions of inlays to USA

Smartrac, a provider of inlays for electronic passports, has obtained a major order to supply several million ePassport inlays for the United States’ ePass project in 2006/2007. The order, placed by Infineon Technologies, is the most significant order in the high-security RFID inlay industry to date, the supplier claims.

The US programme is currently the world’s largest ePass project with a potential volume of 13 to 18 million passports per annum.

Since 2004, Smartrac has been a certified supplier for the US ePassport programme and the company says it is already producing approximately one million inlays a month.

In order to meet the US and increasing worldwide demand for high security inlays Smartrac is planning to open a fourth factory at the company’s location in Thailand as early as January 2007. In addition, Smartrac plans to boost its worldwide production capacity for ePassport inlays in 2007 to four million per month by opening a factory in the USA.

Smartrac says it is currently involved in 70 ePassport programmes and that the total number of ePassport programmes in existence is 95.