Labelling Products and Cartons
Primary products and cartons need to be labelled with human-readable information and scannable symbologies for effective flow through the supply chain and communicating details to the end consumer. These include routine company information, product descriptions, barcodes, retail information, promotional offers and more.
Printing & Applying Labels
There are two main ways labels are applied to primary products:
• applying pre-printed labels by machine — with a Label Applicator (LA)
• printing the information automatically on the production line and then applying the label by machine — with a Label Printer Applicator (LPA)
Label Printer Applicators (LPA) can easily print variable information onto a self-adhesive label, which the LPA then automatically applies. These are ideal where unique information such as use-by-dates or batch codes are needed. In cases where a generic product label is used, an LPA can be used to then over-print product specific information onto this generic label, for example, product description and ingredients lists.
Primary product production lines can operate at rates from 10 to 1200 products per minute, with substrates that can vary from tapered glass pharmaceutical vials through to flexible film fresh produce pillow packs. Labels of all sizes, materials and orientations can be accurately applied when the correct machine is expertly specified.
Eliminate labelling errors
Matthews specialises in integrating any labelling equipment into your business, to enhance your production and streamline getting product to market. All of Label Applicators and Label Printer Applicators can be integrated in to our iDSnet packaging code management solution to ensure the right label is applied on the right product at the right time to eliminate labelling errors. This can be supplemented by machine vision inspection to label presence, label ID, label match.
Common technologies for product labels and carton labels