Nigeria?s National Agency for Food and Drugs Administration and Control have launched a product verification initiative, via RFID, in an effort to reduce the counterfeiting of drugs, reports the African Press Agency.

Carried out in collaboration with Verification Technology Limited (VTL), RFID tags will be equipped to secure the integrity of the drug supply chain, while tracking the product path as it moves through the supply chain from manufacturer to distributors, wholesalers, retailers and finally to the consumers.

Scanners will be placed at all ports of entry to verify drug authenticity. Efforts are also being made to ensure that scanners are made affordable to all manufacturers, hospitals, pharmacists and other users.

The technology will be used for securing documents, inventory control tracking and tracing of products as well as verification of shipment receipts.

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Gaming Partners International announced that it has completed delivery of its casino furniture, casino chips and associated gaming products for the opening of River City Casino, located in St. Louis, Missouri.

GPI provided the River City Casino with its associated table game equipment, which included GPI’s Paulson line of gaming chips, as well as precision dice, table layouts, roulette wheels and table game accessories.

The company supplied all of the casino’s gaming tables, as well as the pit podiums, security podiums and host podiums. All of the furniture was custom-built to accommodate River City’s design and operational requirements.  

Peacock Bros announced the distribution of the new UPM Raflatac freezer-proof RFID tag, designed to operate within conditions reaching temperatures down to -40° C.

The tags provide a white synthetic face which can be printed over with an RFID thermal transfer label printer for encrypting and printing user readable information.

Designed to automate the collection of data for the intake and storage of frozen inventory, the tags comply with all GS1 EPC Global standards. The tags can be read through a covering of frost, humid air and wet surfaces such as packaging and ice.

The system eliminates human error caused from manual input and provides a platform for the real-time locating of products and product movement - reducing labor costs.

The RFID tags can be placed on pallets, cartons and product packaging and do not require line-of-sight to be read.

Alien Technology announced its new Gen2 reader, the ALR-9900+, with performance and feature improvements over its predecessor, the ALR-9900.

The ALR-9900+ supersedes previous regional-specific readers with an operational frequency band ranging from 866MHz to 954MHz. The ALR-9900+ also supports standard and extended electronic product code Gen2 commands as well as custom Higgs-3 commands and features, including extended memory and the enhanced security and authentication feature, dynamic authentication.

The reader supports the ability to hide up to 512-bits of password protected user memory - especially useful for high value asset management, fashion apparel or pharmaceutical applications where authenticity or password protected private information is critical in combating counterfeits, to help defer gray market activity, or to conceal private data from unintended public visibility.

The platform supports near-field and far-field coupling and has been compliance tested with various specialty antennas, including low cost, high performance, low profile, robust, indoor, outdoor, near-field, and conventional circularly and linearly polarized far field patch antennas.

The ALR-9900+ is fully software backwards compatible with the previous generations, including the ALR-9780, ALR-8800, ALR-9800 and the ALR-9900. The reader is also compatible with the ALR-9900 enclosure.

CDO Technologies and Emerson & Cuming Microwave Products have announced an RFID partnership that will intermingle CDO Technologies’ experience in design and implementation of RFID solutions with Emerson & Cuming’s engineering of radio frequency materials.

The partnership will make its debut at the 8th annual AFCEA Belvoir Industry Days Conference in National Harbor, Maryland where the two will present RFID hardware, software and tagging solutions for the defense and military industry.