In February 2006 Smurfit-Stone Container, the world's largest manufacturer of corrugated boxes, demonstrated smart boxes with Gen2-standard RFID inlays embedded directly in the paperboard, so no separate smart label was needed to identify the box. About six months later, Weyerhaeuser, the largest (by revenue) box maker in North America, acquired OrganicID, which developed conductive materials that can be printed directly on packaging to provide RFID identification. Today if you search for "smart packaging" or "intelligent packaging" on either company's site you'll come up empty. You'll get better results at International Paper, but the $22 billion conglomerate has already pulled the plug on its once-ambitious RFID division (see RFID Systems Integrator ASURYS Shutters).

In general, "smart packages" refer to corrugated boxes, pill bottles, or other containers for which RFID is inherent to the packaging itself; "smart labels" refer to the traditional standalone RFID tags that are applied to packages in a separate step of the manufacturing or shipping process (think slap-and-ship).

Research firm NanoMarkets predicts $1.1 billion worth of RFID smart packaging products will be sold by 2011. Developers of RFID smart packaging technology say several product categories have been commercialized and others will be soon. News of promising new developments appears regularly; news about actual users does not.

The recent announcement of new smart packaging technology by Domino Integrated Solutions Group and HIDE-Pack is a perfect example: the companies estimated their smart box material provides 35 percent cost savings compared to smart labels, that it performs very well, and that it has users, but they cannot name who those users are (see New Smart Boxes Provide Alternative to RFID Labels).

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