Approximately 1.7 million packages are lost or stolen every day. Traditional tracking methods rely on barcodes or QR codes, scanned at specific points, but they offer little visibility between stops. Enter Reelables, a start-up redefining logistics with its Bluetooth and 5G smart manufacturing labels that provide real-time tracking from warehouse to doorstep. To meet growing demand, Reelables needed to increase its speed of production. That’s where automation and control specialist, Beckhoff came in.
Reelables was founded by Brian Krejcarek, an entrepreneur with a history of innovative technology. The idea behind the company was sparked in an unlikely moment. Brian was climbing a hill when he realised that he’d forgotten his Chapstick.
This thought evolved into a larger vision: what if there was a way to actively track objects and know what you’re missing before you leave the house? Originally imagined as a business-to-consumer (B2C) concept, Reelables pivoted to a business-to-business (B2B) model, recognising a bigger opportunity in sectors such as freight forwarding, logistics and warehousing.
The company’s goal was to create a tracking label that was so low-cost and scalable, it could be attached to almost anything, eventually replacing traditional barcodes or QR codes with active trackers that constantly broadcast their location.
Today, Reelables produces several types of smart labels: Bluetooth tracking labels designed for asset tracking across a wide range of industries, ideal for high-value logistics where delay costs are significant, and temperature-sensitive labels, accurate to 0.5 Degrees Celsius and popular in cold chain applications like seafood logistics.
Logistics companies and end-customers benefit from the real-time tracking that Reelables’ labels offer and, unlike its competitors, the company’s labels, similar in shape and size to your credit card, come on reels that can be directly integrated into automated label application processes, replacing traditional paper or plastic labels entirely.
Collaboration
Oliver Boswall-Perks joined Reelables in 2019. As part of his role as Mechatronics Engineer, he was tasked with developing the company’s manufacturing capacbilities.
“Reelables is the only company producing labels that have an integrated printed battery,” explained Oliver. “There are several advantages to this. First, our smart labels are categorised as packaging, meaning that they don’t need to be declared at customs. Second, the labels can pass through standard waste streams, aligning with the sustainability goals of our customers.”
Having worked with Beckhoff in a previous role, Oliver reached out to Bradley McEwan, Business Development Manager at Beckhoff UK.
“Reelables approached us with a great proof of concept — a smart Bluetooth label that was gaining popularity in the industry — but their early production set up wasn’t built for scale,” explained Bradley. “They needed to shift from a manual process using non-industrial hardware to a fully-automated, high-speed manufacturing line.”
Before working with Beckhoff, the team was producing thousands of labels in a ten-hour shift. As demand grew, the team built up the system, layer by layer, always aiming to increase speed and throughput and improve quality.
“It was a classic chicken-and-egg scenario,” added Bradley. “You need a product to go to market, but you can’t invest heavily in production infrastructure until there’s demand. As the company’s labels started selling well, it became clear that they needed a fully automated system that could grow with them.”
The collaboration started with a face-to-face meeting at Reelables’ site in London. Beckhoff looked at the company’s existing set-up, and spoke to Oliver and the team about what they were hoping to achieve. From this, Beckhoff engineered a new system from a series of discrete manufacturing modules to which Beckhoff’s automation software could be onboarded.
The technology
The new system is built on a fully integrated Beckhoff TwinCAT and EtherCAT platform, incorporating a range of Beckhoff hardware and software components. This includes industrial PCs (IPCs), drives, real-time vision systems, human-machine-interface (HMI) touchscreens, and displays.
Reelables also benefited from being an early adopter of TwinCAT Vision and Motion integration. Their system runs on the Software Platform Toolkit (SPT) Framework — the first deployment of its kind in the UK. The architecture supports easy expansion and integration of future machines, making it extremely scalable. The framework provides a structured, modular approach to machine sequencing and is fully PackML-compliant.
“What really made the difference was that Beckhoff wasn’t just selling us hardware,” added Oliver. “They helped create the whole system — vision, motion, logic — all working together. That level of support is rare, especially for a company of our size.”
Reelables also engaged Beckhoff’s engineering services. Beckhoff product engineer, Chris Knight led the programming effort, working on-site with the Reelables team to develop the machine code, logic and sequencing over several months.
“With a small team of just ten people, Chris’ insight was invaluable,” added Oliver. “Chris brought deep expertise that accelerated our progress and helped the team quickly get to grips with the system. He played a key role in mentoring us and connecting us with Beckhoff’s wider network of motion and vision experts, which massively sped up the process.”
The TwinCAT Vision system plays a critical role in quality control. It captures high-resolution images of each label as it moves through the line, calculating precise rotational and positional offsets, checking for defects, and ensuring that glue is dispensed with micron-level accuracy. Importantly, the system also flags and skips labels that would fail further downstream.
The system now captures images of multiple labels simultaneously, enabling faster processing and greater consistency. This allows Reelables to maintain quality at high speed, now producing tens of thousands of labels per shift — a 150 per cent increased compared with the previous system.
“Switching to TwinCAT meant that we could integrate real-time vision into the process, something that we relied on humans for before,” said Oliver. Now, not only is it faster, but the quality hasn’t dropped at all. In fact, it’s more consistent.”
Looking ahead
Reelables is building a full digital record of every label, with data captured at multiple checkpoints throughout the production line. This feeds into an AI-driven analytics system designed to predict failure risk based on dispensing quality, chip placement, substrate condition, and environmental factors and more. The system can take real-time corrective actions — such as skipping chip placement or epoxy — reducing waste and improving yield and time.
A next-generation vision system is also underway, with multiple cameras deployed across key inspection stations, all managed by a single Beckhoff IPC. This infrastructure supports machine learning models that will soon classify failures as manufacturing – or field-related, closing the loop between production and real-world performance.
To meet growing demand, Reelables is scaling production with two new compact lines, and a high-throughput system — The Stratus R22M — designed to produce tens of thousands of labels per hour. Three of the four core machines for Stratus R22M are already built or fully engineered, positioning Reelables to dramatically increase capacity and reduce lead times.
“Working with Beckhoff has been a game-changer for Reelables,” concluded Oliver. “We are now prepared for our next phase of growth, and everything that comes beyond that.”
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