SMARTRAC N.V., a developer, manufacturer and supplier of RFID transponders, today announced that it has obtained Card Quality Management (CQM) Certification from MasterCard for its factory in Kulim, Malaysia. The CQM Label has been granted to SMARTRAC’s high frequency card inlays following an on-site audit.

SMARTRAC has started setting up card inlay production in its Malaysian production facility in fall 2010. The expansion is part of an investment program targeted at enlarging the company’s worldwide production capacity.

STMicroelectronics a supplier of MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems) devices for consumer and portable applications, and Bluechiip Limited, an innovative early-stage company that has developed a groundbreaking tracking solution, announced that the two companies are to cooperate in the manufacturing of unique MEMS-based tracking tags, aimed at a range of different markets, but initially in healthcare, such as biobanks.

As the bluechiip tracking tag is a mechanical device, it has the unique ability to both survive and read the ID of samples in extremely high and low temperatures, in addition to its immunity to gamma irradiation. This robustness therefore provides significant advantages over more traditional identification or tracking solutions, such as labels, barcodes or RFID technologies, and provides the necessary high levels of data surety in the rapidly growing and labor-intensive healthcare markets, especially in biobanking.