(Yicai Global) July 27—Electronic article surveillance (EAS) accessories maker Hangzhou Century Co. [SHE:300078] in East China's Zhejiang Province announced yesterday that it has no cooperation with e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. [NYSE:BABA] in the field of unstaffed retailing and retail stores.

The company's cooperation with Alibaba is in new retailing technology field of offline stores, said the statement from Hangzhou Century, a radio frequency identification (RFID) and source tagging developer. Although its RFID can meet technical requirements of unstaffed retailing, Hangzhou Century has not signed any contract with Alibaba about unstaffed retailing, it clarified.

A senior Hangzhou Century company manager said when replying to questions from investors on the investor relationship interactive platform of Shenzhen Stock Exchange that "Century has contacted with Alibaba team to jointly discuss new development in retailing," but did not disclose any further details.

Alibaba Group opened an unstaffed retailing pilot store in Hangzhou, where the Group is headquartered, early this month. Stock market investors are optimistic about the concept of unstaffed retailing. After several network media reported the dialogue with the investors, the stock price of Century surged in the afternoon of July 25, hitting the 10 percent upper limit regulated by the Exchange, the statement said.

RFID technology can recognize specific tagged items through radio signal and read and write relevant data. It is also a key technology to build the Internet of Things. Hangzhou Century shares continued to rise yesterday following its peak the previous day although the surge yesterday was only 1.03 percent.