Coffee Bags
Situation
Customer manually applying two labels to bags of freshly roasted coffee. This added both cost and time to the process, making it more challenging to fulfill orders as the business grew
Approach
Smart-Jet printer installed on the coffee bag sealing conveyor to print the best before and roasted on date, along with the GTIN-12 (UPC-A) for point of purchase scanning.
Issues
Coffee beans do not uniformly fill coffee bags; ensuring the printer is close enough to the bag to ensure good print quality required guide rails and operator training. More significantly, the bags proved challenging to print, due to the ink spreading and “graying” after printing. The customer worked with the bag supplier to provide bags with a white rectangle print area. The bag supplier also corona-treated the print area (this was already being done as part of the original bag design, so no extra cost was incurred) to dramatically improve the ink receptivity.
Results
Customer is printing consistently scannable GTIN-12 (UPC) bar codes, product information, and best before information directly on the bags, eliminating the manual application of the two labels. Customer also installed a Smart-Jet to print on their shipping containers as they run through the box sealer. Customer saved on labels and labor, and has increased throughput, which has helped them continue to grow and add more retail partners.
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Picture of a purchased bag of coffee, successfully scanned at checkout at the local retailer.
