Smart Label Market

Market Overview

The global smart label market size to grow at USD 35 billion in 2030 at a CAGR of 16% from the early market figure of USD 9 billion in 2021.

Smart labels are becoming more popular these days in various industries, including retail, healthcare, logistics, and industrial segments. The smart labels are an ideal means to achieve greater efficiencies along with profitability providing the required authenticity of an item and its tracking from the warehouse to the distribution center through the supply chain. The smart labels provide detailed information about an individual item or a set of unique items and provide a real-time tracking system to ensure authenticity and genuineness. These smart labels are installed with smart chips enabling the real-time tracking of the product and the location.

Market Dynamics

Drivers: Increase in the Demand for Security and Tracking Solutions Driving the Smart Label Market Growth

The issues connected with burglary protection and duplicating are vital to any industry. As endeavors across the world are setting up more immediate selling chains everywhere, the significance of safety frameworks against robbery and falsifying is foremost nowadays. The utilization of these smart labels additionally helps the arrangement taking on ventures to utilize them alongside other new-age innovations, to extricate additional negligible advantages from the speculations.

These are not just used as anti-theft devices or tags but are also used to track the location; some manufacturers even use these smart labels with smart sensors to collect important data about the product usage or transport. Figuring out the approaching and active progression of raw materials in enterprises and keeping a track denotes the contrast between meeting business objectives and buyer fulfillment.

Conspicuous market players have created material flow solutions that help enterprises in conveying and delivering materials with in-time accuracy. Even nowadays, organizations are using the RFID for their employee's ID cards, where they can track their employee's attendance and in and out track records with in-time accuracy. This also plays a vital role in the growth of the market, as the corporate sector, along with the industrial segment, has a highly increasing demand for smart labels, which is driving the market forward.

Restraints: Lack of Safety Concerns and Inability to Withstand Harsh Climatic Conditions Hindering Growth of the Smart Label Market

Though the smart chip-enabled smart labels do a lot of favors for industrial and commercial purposes, it does have some limitations like universal incapability, safety concerns, and inability to withstand harsh climatic conditions. These limitations may seem normal but can hamper the growth of the market. When used for shipping purposes, the smart labels have to face sunlight, and when exposed to sunlight, the smart label printing gets dissolved due to the dissolving nature of the solvents used for printing on the smart labels.

The labels should have the ability to go through the tough conditions during shipping, storage, or at the point-of-use, as many labels get damaged during these steps. For many industries, label printing is necessary for labeling important processes and products during and after the manufacturing process, as it has important information regarding the product and shipping information.

This is why the smart labels should come with a secured barcode system that cannot be breached and would be able to track unauthorized access, if any, through the printed smart label. Apart from this, such smart labels' inability to cater to all needs can be one of the barriers that can hamper the growth of the smart label market.

Opportunities: Technological Investments to Offer New Growth Avenues

The global smart label market will have plenty of opportunities for AI and IoT professionals in the near future, as the need for improvement in the smart labels is the need of the hour. With all the restraints discussed above, it is clear that smart labels must be developed and integrated with cutting-edge technology to cater to security concerns and the ability to withstand harsh climatic conditions.

This is why companies are searching for vendors who can develop smart labels with materials and stringent chemicals that can withstand any type of weather conditions, which would be wear-resistant and connected with IoT devices through barcode scanning with new and improvised technology. This need is creating a wide range of opportunities for those IT firms and vendors who will be developing smart labels that will counter the restraints associated with it.

Regional Analysis

The global smart label market share, when segmented with respect to regions, is primarily segmented into four major regions, namely- North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Middle-East & Africa.

North America is the most dominant region with a market share of USD 3 billion in 2021 and is anticipated to grow to USD 10 billion by 2030 at a CAGR of 14%. North America is known as one of the most technologically advanced regions in the world, with the presence of the major powerhouse of the global economy, the US.

Being the most technologically advanced region, the smart label technology was first invented and utilized in the region, which gained popularity worldwide and contributed to the overall economy with a significant revenue generation.

Europe is the second dominant region in the said market, with an anticipated market value to reach USD 9 billion by 2030 at a CAGR of 15%. Europe has a high demand for RFIDs and EAS labels that are widely used in industries. Europe being an industrial hub for the world has the majority of manufacturing industries functioning in the region, which is why the said segment has a substantial market share over here.

Asia-Pacific and Middle-East & Africa are at the third and fourth position in the revenue generation for the said market, with an estimated market share to reach USD 9 billion by 2030 for the Asia-Pacific region at a CAGR of 17%, and the market in Middle-East & Africa is valued at USD 3 billion at a CAGR of 15% till 2030.

Segmental Analysis

The global smart label market share is segmented by technology and by its end-use. Where the ''by-technology segmentation is categorized into – RFID, Electronic Article Surveillance (EAS), and Sensing Labels. The RFID category has a dominant market share with a valuation of USD 6 billion in 2021 and is expected to reach USD 22 billion by 2030 with a CAGR of 16%. The typical RFID systems are made up of two major components – the reader and the label. The smart label consists of an RFID system with a high-end graphical user interface.

Apart from these, the two main components of an RFID system are the transponder and the interrogator, which means one is the label attached to the antenna and the other is the RFID reader. The RFIDs are showing significant growth in the automotive, pharma, and healthcare industries amid the smart labeling systems and can reduce the labor costs up to 50-80% that the companies bore for warehouses as well as the processes that require a large number of people to complete a task would be completed in a comparatively less number of people with the help of RFID technology.

The most common use of these RFIDs is tracking goods in the supply chain, tracking parts moving to the manufacturing and production line in an industry, tracing assets, security and payment status, etc. But the RFIDs are most commonly used in the healthcare industry for various reasons, including patients' wristbands to offer exact identification and tracking of their health within no time. For all these reasons, the RFID technology is in high demand and gaining superiority over the other technological segments of the global market.

Electronic Article Surveillance labels or EAS labels have high demand in the apparel and footwear industry, health and beauty products industry, and food and beverages industry and are used for other manufactured products that are to be sold in the retail market. The smart labels based on EAS technology that can fulfill various functions related to tracking and surface electronic functions are currently being developed with full force.

This is the reason the EAS segment has substantial importance in the market segmentation that accounts for USD 1 billion in 2021 and reaching to USD 3 billion by 2030 at a CAGR of 12%. The third dominant segment by technology in the smart label market is the sensing labels segment, which accounts for a market share to reach USD 2 billion by 2030 at a CAGR of 13%.

There are various types of sensing labels that are used for tracking the required factors with the help of technologies like optical, ultrasonic, and capacitive sensors. Companies are deploying such sensors and using them to check the product's condition to prevent any damage or spoilage of the product.

When segmented with respect to end-user, the global market is further classified into retail, healthcare, and logistics. The retail sector won the market battle among the other segments, with an overall market valued at USD 3 billion in 2021 and anticipated to grow at USD 9 billion by 2030 at a CAGR of 14%. The retail industry makes use of RFIDs, QR codes, EAS tags, and labels for tracking their products in real-time.

RFID systems like handheld scanners, point-of-sale scanners, and EAS gate antennas are widely used for inventory management. It is mostly used for efficient tracking of the inventory and shipping process. The next category in the end-user category is the healthcare and pharma industry, which accounts for a market share of USD 2 billion in 2021 and is expected to grow to USD 7 billion by 2030 at a CAGR of 17%.

The healthcare sector makes use of such smart labels to track their patients' activities, the medicines, and other medical equipment that are in operation. In the pharmaceutical industry, these smart labels play a vital role in managing the inventories and tracking each and every medicine with respect to the medical classification making it more organized. Logistics is the third category in the end-user segment, with an anticipated market value of USD 8 billion by 2030 at a CAGR of 17%. The logistics sector uses such labels for their shipping needs to track the product or the order in real-time; that is why the market has a substantial revenue generation from the logistics sector.

Impact of covid-19

Coronavirus flare-up has impacted international exchange and global stock chains of fundamental and non-fundamental goods and services. With the spread of COVID-19 across the world, businesses and organizations have sustained a great loss as the said market has been adversely affected by the pandemic. With huge intricacy in keeping up with the production network interaction of different end-client businesses, the shrewd mark arrangement is supposed to observe reception in the process to work on the general inventory network process.

Additionally, the following resources have been moving during the pandemic time because of interruption in the inventory network where numerous items were held at better places, making it hard for the end client to track and causing huge misfortunes. The interest from healthcare and pharma end-client saw an uncommon ascent during the pandemic, where tough guidelines with respect to shipment and transportation were observed. The competition to foster the COVID-19 Vaccine also saw an alternate association's critical development.

Recent Developments

• In December 2020, Avery Dennison Corporation introduced AD-332µ8 RAIN RFID inlay for the demanding retail environments to cater to ARC category requirements.
• In August 2020, CCL Industries Inc. launched UNO EP RF/RFID label to enhance inventory management.
• In February 2021, Presco Polymers Opco Inc. acquired William Frick & company to provide safety marking and damage prevention.
• In March 2021, Honeywell corporation Inc. acquired the Invengo textile services business segment to expand its RFID technology enablement solutions.