GRAND RAPIDS ? DaVinci Capital, a West Michigan private equity firm, lined up an undisclosed sum of money to invest in RF IDentics, an RFID tag technology company. The investment came from a group of local investors, including the Grand Angels.
The funding will support RF IDentics? business plan to design and manufacture high- performance, low-cost tags and labels for the rapidly growing U.S. and international Radio Frequency Identification market.
?It?s a start up company and this is the first round of funding,?? said DaVinci Capital principal David Hooker. ?We?re real excited about an opportunity that is just exploding. We see a real market in drug packaging where these smaller tags can be fastened to a bottle of drugs.?
Hooker declined to disclose the amount of money invested.
The Chairman of RF IDentics is the former President and CEO of Siemens Dematic AG, Pete Metros. He said the
company plans to create approximately 18 jobs at its new Engineering and Manufacturing facilities ? at a downtown Grand Rapids Renaissance Zone. Their awaiting a new $1 million tag-making machine to be shipped from Germany. The machine will allow RF IDentics to churn out tags at less than 20 cents each.
RFID tag technology uses antennas and microchips to automatically collect information on products, places, times and transactions. Unlike bar codes, RFID relies on advanced microchip communication, allowing users to write, read and store data on individual tags. The U.S. Department of Defense, along with retail giants Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Home Depot, and Target, have directed their suppliers to comply with newly created RFID global standards, offering promising, long-term opportunities for firms like RF IDentics. The growing RFID market, including hardware, software, services and tags, is expected to exceed $2.6 billion in 2006 and $7 billion by 2008.
RF IDentics marks the fourth local investment of the Grand Angels since its formation in Jan. 2004. The group was launched by local business leaders to fund promising start-up companies.
