ICENTRE incubatee John Harith Technology is looking at global deployment of its RFID (Radio frequency identification) Halal Traceability System sometime this year after it signed a memorandum of collaboration (MoC) with Malaysian firm Smartag Solutions Bhd.

John Harith, which specialises in RFID technology, last month signed an agreement with Smartag Solutions to use the latter's Smartrack software for its halal traceability project during the local deployment phase.

"Through this collaboration, we will be able to further develop the halal traceability software application on top of Smartrack. This makes Smartrack the engine for the project," said John Lim, General Manager of John Harith Technology.

The local firm was recently awarded a pilot project to develop a halal traceability and supply chain management system for the Ministry of Religious Affairs (MoRA).

Speaking to The Brunei Times, Lim said that the collaboration with Smartags Solutions will allow the system to be marketed overseas, while tapping into Smartag's EPCIS (Electronic Product Code Information Services) engine (RFID Repository) as a gateway for the solution to be deployed in many countries.

RFID is the use of an object (typically referred to as an RFID tag) applied to or incorporated into a product, animal, or person for the purpose of identification and tracking through radio waves.

"RFID technology is picking up in the food and packaging industry all around the world as it is being utilised to track inventory and food safety," said Lim.

The company is confident that its traceability system can be marketed outside Brunei as the Brunei Halal identity gains recognition worldwide as one of the most trusted Halal labels.

"Brunei has the potential to be an Islamic centre of excellence within this region.

"The country is conducive for such a vast industry due to its strong Islamic identity. Brunei Halal is one platform we want to capitalise on," said Lim.

Lim said the food industry, in particular the areas which involve Halal certification, has the potential to leverage on RFID technology as the majority of Muslim consumers are highly concerned with the authenticity of food products.

"When everything is already set up here, it will be much easier for us to sell this technology outside," he added.

In addition, he said, the deployment of the system worldwide will help encourage more made-in-Brunei halal food products to be exported overseas.

In December last year, John Harith signed an agreement with the The Authority for Info-communications Technology Industry of Brunei Darussalam (AITI) in collaboration with MoRA to implement a pilot project on tracking Halal food products through the use of RFID technology.

Under this pilot project, the RFID traceability system will be developed by John Harith to authenticate and track the Halal status for food products where the initial focus will be on detection of chicken and raw meat produced by the local abattoir.

The authentic Halal logo issued by the Ministry will be validated using RFID tag embedded in the meat packages.

An RFID reader will be placed at retail stores for consumers to authenticate the product's status and obtain range of information including the slaughtering processes, sources of ingredients, manufacturing and expiry dates of the product.

This pilot system, which is expected to begin deployment within this year, will involve users from the Halal Food Control Division of Ministry of MoHA, one selected local abattoir and a retail store.

Lim said that the company is looking at expanding its implementation of RFID technology in the future in areas of employee identification cards and mobile payment systems.The Brunei Times