MARKEM - Choc Full of Good Ideas

Master chocolatier Thorntons has dramatically reduced its batch changeover times, creating the potential to produce an additional output of 1,000,000 chocolate bars per year, by installing MARKEM’s SmartDate 5s thermal transfer coder on one of its major packaging lines.

By adopting MARKEM’s new SmartDate 5s coder the company has also increased the speed and quality of its date coding process and is now printing around 500,000 bars per week at 300 packs per minute and ribbon speeds of 1000 mm per second.

Traceability at the Thorntons plant has improved substantially because of the coder’s ability to print the precise date and time of packaging on to each bar. This makes it easy to locate bars produced in any specific timeframe.

In addition, the unique ribbon saving technologies of the SmartDate 5s have also cut the amount of ribbon required on the line by a third.

The Thorntons factory in Alfreton, Derbyshire adopted the new SmartDate 5s continuous coder to replace an old rotary coder, after its ultra-fast performance and solid, crisp codes impressed engineers in product trials.

The coder is being used to continuously print ‘best before’ dates and traceability data on 25 different varieties of chocolate bar 24 hours per day, 6 days a week.

Technical Process Manager Mark Campion comments: “With the old rotary coder, it took around 15 minutes to change over each batch, because we had to wait for the barrel to cool down and for the brass lettering to be changed manually. With the SmartDate 5s changeover is virtually automatic. This has allowed us to significantly ramp up our product output.”

He adds: “MARKEM also worked closely with us to reduce the length of the code being printed from 30mm to 20mm, saving 10mm per impression, thereby reducing our ribbon costs by a third.”

Due to its patented shuttle design, the SmartDate 5s coder is capable of operating at up to twice the speed of similar coders on the market, while maintaining exceptional print quality and ensuring that ribbon usage is kept to a minimum.

The coder can also automatically calculate the ‘best before’ dates using preset formulas, thereby reducing human errors caused by manual inputting.

SmartDate coders can be found on all kinds of packaging lines, adding date and batch codes to flow-wraps, bags, labels, sachets and pouches around the world.

For more information please contact MARKEM on 0161 333 8400.

Notes to Editors
If you would like more press information or photography, please contact:
Jo Freeman / Siobhan Sheils at Rattle PR
Tel: 0161 968 3450
Fax: 0161 968 3451
Email: jo@rattlepr.co.uk