Jenton Dimaco’s high-performance Veri-Pack label verification systems are found widely across a range of food manufacturing sites, to provide accurate data, including use by dates, country of origin, and allergen information which are critical for the retail customer. The latest applications and a full technology overview will be one of the Keynote presentations at the up-coming AIPIA Congress (16 November).
The equipment also ensures labels are accurately positioned and the correct version of the artwork is being used – helping reduce product rejects, recalls, and repackaging which can lead to brand damage and costly delays or litigation.
Label-related defects are a major reason why food is returned to the manufacturer with typical errors such as incorrect use-by dates. These are often caused by operator error or printer faults during production, meaning otherwise perfectly good food products are wasted, leading to an increased carbon footprint. Veri-Pack helps to find labeling issues early in the process.
Forming a vital link in the traceability chain, this data verification equipment checks the correct labels have been applied and all essential pre-printed and overprinted data such as barcodes, dates, price, and weight are accurate and legible.
The company says that as well as preventing incorrect packs leaving the factory, it also facilitates end of line packing automation. In most cases, manual packers are the last line of defence and responsible for ensuring the product is correctly labeled. However, manual packers generally only check a sample of the packs for correct labeling. The data they are checking against is often unreliable and there is no record of the check having been made. As a result, it is inevitable that non-conformances will occur due to only a very small percentage of labels being checked.
Many retailers now use a code of practice that allows for automatic label checks if the system is sufficiently capable and robust. Jenton Dimaco’s label verification systems exceed what is required by most UK retailers.
Available as off-line sampling stations, online systems integrated into other packaging machines, or as independent conveyor units with reject devices, Veri-Pack units are capable of scanning images of labels or packaging film to detect and read characters, barcodes, and numbers using the best OCR (optical character recognition) software available. Jenton Dimaco’s Veri-Central database, which coordinates all data with producer and retailers’ databases, checks if the variable and non-variable data is accurate. Simple checking quality of print is pointless if the data itself is incorrect, it says.
Come and learn about this valuable way to save food before it goes into the distribution chain at the AIPIA Congress.
See digitalization in AIPIA Congress packaging agenda here
This article was first published on AIPIA website.