HID Taps Jean-Miguel Robadey to Head New RIFD Animal Tagging Venture
HID Global has appointed Jean-Miguel Robadey to run the company’s identification solutions (IDS) RFID animal-tagging business. As global director, Robadey will be responsible for extending HID’s two-decades-long leadership in RFID tagging into the rapidly growing market for solutions that improve the traceability of individual animals through the supply chain.
“We are very excited to have someone of Jean-Miguel’s caliber and reputation running this very important element of our IDS business,” said Marie Glotz, vice president of animal ID, Industry and Logistics with HID Global. “Jean-Miguel has managed several successful organizations serving the pet and livestock markets, and he has extensive experience across the full range of product development, manufacturing and sales. We are making major investments in this business, and Jean-Miguel’s appointment is another key step in reinforcing and expanding our position as one of the world’s top RFID solution providers for a variety of markets, including the fast-growing animal-tagging segment.”
According to market research firm IDTechX, the RFID business has grown, despite the global financial meltdown, and is a business of well over $5 billion today. The firm said in its October 2010 report “RFID for Animals, Food and Farming 2011-2021” that the RFID market will triple in the next ten years, not least because a great variety of needs and government regulation is driving adoption in animals, food and farming – a sector that the firm expects to grow nine-fold.
HID currently develops and manufactures a wide range of transponders specifically designed for livestock and pet identification, as well as tracking applications for research and exotic animals. The company’s portfolio includes standard and customizable ISO-compliant products such as glass tags and electronic units that make it possible to automatically record the origin and history of individual animals. The company also plans to offer complete solutions for a variety of animal-tagging applications, and is one of the few companies that can give development partners access to a global product supply and highly responsive service so they can deliver just-in-time customer solutions for such challenging seasonal requirements as herd animal breeding and management.
Robadey brings nearly 20 years of experience to HID’s RFID animal-tagging organization, including extensive knowledge of the animal-tagging segment. He was most recently product line director at Smartrac Technology in Singapore, where he was responsible for the company’s BIO line and drove all activities related to the company’s animal ID offering. Before joining Smartrac, Robadey was head of the food and animal business segment at Sokymat SA in Granges, Switzerland, where he successfully executed the company’s 30 percent annual growth strategy between 2005 and 2007. He also held a number of product development, manufacturing and management positions with increasing levels of responsibility at the company during his 16-year tenure there.
“I am extremely excited about the opportunities to accelerate HID’s already rapid growth in this segment, where the task of tracking and managing animals has become ever-more critical and challenging,” Robadey said. “HID Global is a world leader in the development of radio frequency secure contactless technology used to manage and safeguard critical assets like these. The company is ideally positioned to offer animal identification products that meet a wide variety of global standards and critical customer requirements, all backed by the genuine HID value proposition, which stresses the highest levels of global product quality and delivery performance.”
HID Global has extensive experience in secure, contactless technology, including transponders and reader module solutions. The company offers the industry’s broadest portfolio of field-proven RFID tags across diverse industrial vertical markets, and has delivered more than one billion RFID tags worldwide. All HID Global, RFID tags incorporate read-write capability in device memory so that the tags’ stored data can be actively updated or read, ultimately improving business performance through tracking or quality control.