Every industry has its awards season, but for supply chain and logistics, the spotlight hits a little differently. Innovation here goes beyond prestige – it’s defined by technology that’s proven in the real world, at industrial scale, and under harsh operational pressures. That’s why this year’s recognition of Royal Mail and Wiliot stands out. It signals that ambient IoT has moved from promising technology to award-winning, field-validated transformation.
Three 2025 honours
Royal Mail and Wiliot recently earned accolades for their pioneering work embedding ambient IoT technology into postal operations with three 2025 honours:
- Global Procurement & Supply Chain Awards Project of the Year
- Parcel & Postal Technology International Awards Transportation Innovation of the Year
- Supply Chain Excellence Visibility Award
The three awards highlight both the technical achievement – and, more importantly, the broader significance of real-time visibility in modern shipping.
A shift in postal intelligence
In fact, these honours support a shift happening across global logistics: the movement from static, scan-based tracking to continuous, sensor-driven intelligence. Historically, parcel tracking depended on barcodes and fixed infrastructure – scanning items at hand-off points, loading docks, and distribution centres. But this legacy method creates blind spots that make it hard to proactively manage delays, misroutes, and other handling issues.
Wiliot’s ambient IoT platform closes those gaps. At its core are tiny, self-powered IoT Pixels that attach to mail containers and communicate with standard Bluetooth infrastructure. Royal Mail was among the first to deploy the technology at scale (the initial deployment tracked about 900,000 rolling cages across thousands of vehicles and facilities), proving that ambient IoT can deliver real-time visibility without costly infrastructure or battery-powered trackers.
The awards committees acknowledged this as a breakthrough in supply chain strategy, proving that visibility can be delivered as a lightweight, scalable enhancement to an existing ecosystem. Moreover, they underscored how ambient IoT can reshape the daily operations of carriers, enabling automated reconciliation, reducing error rates, and unlocking predictive insights.
Taken together, the awards demonstrate that ambient IoT is ready for mainstream logistics, where billions of items move through networks that demand both efficiency and resilience. Royal Mail’s deployment shows that when you combine a national postal infrastructure with ambient IoT’s continuous visibility, you get something greater than incremental improvement – you get a preview of the future of supply chain intelligence.
Why these wins matter for the future
For Royal Mail, the benefits were immediate and measurable, leading to millions of pounds in recovered assets, millions of litres of fuel saved annually, and progress toward its net-zero goals. What should the industry read into this success? Here are a few observations:
Scalability and economics validated at national scale. That a national postal operator like Royal Mail is deploying ambient IoT at scale – and winning awards for it – means the economics are working. Large-scale rollouts show that Wiliot IoT Pixels are cost-effective enough for mass deployment, making ambient IoT commercially viable.
Real-time visibility as a standard expectation. Traditionally, postal networks tracked items via discrete scanning events. Ambient IoT introduces continuous, passive visibility for containers and, eventually, parcels. This enables earlier detection of bottlenecks, better routing decisions, optimised asset use (e.g. fewer empty containers), and faster exception handling.
Sustainability and carbon-reduction baked in. The awards zero in on an important sustainability benefit: Royal Mail’s use of real-time pixel data to improve vehicle utilisation. Designing supply chains to minimise climate impact is now as important as speed and reliability. Ambient IoT enables enhanced carbon tracking, giving companies a tool for emissions visibility and reduction.
The next frontier is end-to-end visibility. Royal Mail started by tracking containers and other assets. The next logical step is tagging individual parcels end-to-end. Based on Royal Mail’s success, they and others can proceed confidently with item-level visibility rollouts, giving customers better tracking, proof of condition, and carbon-footprint transparency.
Ecosystem growth and standard-building will only accelerate. When awards bodies recognise ambient IoT work, it builds momentum in the broader ecosystem. Tag manufacturers scale production; reader/infrastructure suppliers invest; standards bodies (Bluetooth, 5G, etc.) see stronger use cases. That means faster innovation, lower cost, and greater adoption by enterprises globally.
Ambient IoT: Beyond postal shipping
Big picture, ambient IoT has crossed a threshold from emerging to inevitable. Postal networks are among the most complex, high-volume, cost-sensitive environments in the world. If ambient IoT can scale there, it can scale anywhere.
Retailers can extend real-time visibility to products moving through stores and distribution centres. Cold-chain operators can track temperature and condition continuously, not just at hand-off points. Manufacturers can achieve item-level traceability from production through fulfilment without manual scans. Even healthcare and pharmaceuticals can benefit from continuous monitoring of sensitive items without adding operational burden.
Royal Mail’s recognised success working with Wiliot effectively serves as a blueprint, demonstrating that with the right platform, ambient IoT can be deployed through existing infrastructure to create a more intelligent, automated, and transparent supply chain across virtually every sector.
Walmart thinks so, too. Today, as holiday volumes surge and expectations rise, those embracing ambient IoT will not just survive the peak – they’ll scale it.