Checkpoint expands offerings with acquisition

By Staff -- Modern Materials Handling, 1/1/2000

The combined entity now offers a variety of products and services to automatically mark, identify, and/or track an object as it passes through the supply chain from manufacturing through to final retail sale. The purchase more than doubles the company's estimated 2000 revenues to $750 million.

As a result of the acquisition, Checkpoint increases its worldwide electronic article surveillance (EAS) market share to 33% and its European share to 43%.

"In addition to our increased worldwide EAS market share, the acquisition of Meto provides a portal to the $10 billion automatic identification market," says Kevin Dowd, Checkpoint president and CEO. "This market represents the convergence of the security and tracking businesses which coincides with the increased need for asset management solutions by industry. Moreover, we believe there are considerable consolidation opportunities within the larger, faster growing automatic identification industry and our strategy will focus on both internal and external growth prospects."

The company provides source tagging to the worldwide retail community with a volume of more than 800 million source tagged units. The company offers both radio frequency (RF) and electro-magnetic (EM) technologies. Product offerings include thermal printing systems, security systems, hand held labelers, merchandising systems, security labels, and thermal labels.

In addition, the acquisition includes a global service bureau that integrates retail and manufacturing requirements for product identification and branding. These capabilities with RFID technology allow for the creation of a new line of smart labels by combining conventional bar codes with RFID.

The new company has 4,500 employees operating in 27 countries.