Post Date: November 8, 2020

Coding of Tear-Open Sachets

The use of tear-open sachets in Food and Beverage is a fast growing segment in packaging. Small pouches are used for the packaging of dairy, snacks, sauces, confectionery, beverages, and various food products. The surge in demand is driven by consumers who prefer small, individual-size servings that can fit in a purse or a pocket.

One such manufacturer is Pump Street Chocolate (PSC), a seller of couverture chocolate and chocolate powders for the foodservice sector. Their small tear-open sachets for 20g chocolate bars are popular with coffee shops, hotels, business travelers and more.

PSC has had great success automating the date coding process on sachets by installing a high-speed feeding system with a Markoprint® coder. The company was literally writing the sell-by-date on the sachets by hand for roughly 4,000 chocolate bars. A task that previously took multiple employees several days, is now accomplished in less than an hour using the new technology.

The Rotech RF Lite feeder is ideal for food producers looking to automate their date marking process for the first time. The system takes individual packs from a hopper, positions them for coding, then transfers them to a stack of coded sachets. The feeding system has a linear speed of up to 60m per minute.

The success at PSC also reveals other benefits of Markoprint over alternative print technologies. Markoprint is an on-demand system with no cost or waste when the coder is not in use. And because the entire printhead and ink supply system is replaced with each new cartridge, there are none of the maintenance requirements or mess associated with Continuous Inkjet.

Finally, the print quality and versatility of Markoprint is superb, providing high adhesion on high-gloss surfaces.  Available ink colors include black, red, white, blue, yellow, light blue and more.