Martek Offline Carton Coder

Hand-applying labels to outer case cartons, trays and bags is not only costly financially but also costly to the environment. Martek has designed the Ofllice Case Coder to offer a cost-effective and sustainable alternative to hand-applying labels. UBS Aplink MRX injet printers are used to print directly onto porous or non-porous packaging. Text in any font and point size, detailed graphics, barcodes and 2D codes can be printed with a maximim print height of 72 or 140mm.

The high-capacity 1-litre ink bottle delivers sufficient ink to print 200,000 to 250,000 typical outer case designs with costs usually 6 to 8 times lower than using thermal transfer label and ribbons. For porous surfaces, mineral-free oil-based ink is used, approved by FEFCO for printing onto cardboard that will be recycled. For non-porous surfaces, polymer-based ink is used with the latest UVLED curing technology.

In order to label the same 200,000+ cartons that can be printed with a single 1-litre bottle of ink. 350Kg of labels would be required. Of this typically 140Kg would be backing paper which cannot be recycled with other paper and card waste due to the non-stick silicone coating. In addition, the 350Kg of label materials would normally originate from high-energey papaer production facilities in northern Europe then be transported to a UK-based processing plant for conversion into master reels for producing labels then shipped to the label converter for final label roll production and then onto the end user. Therefore 350Kg of material will often take 3 journeys compared to a 1-litre bottle of ink with substantial associated haulage carbon impact.

UBS Aplink systems come with UBS Designer PC-based software to design and upload virtually unlimited numbers of print images into the printer memory. Printers can then run in stand-alone mode without a PC connected using the touch screen controller to select the required print image and enter variable data such as batch code, counter start value and expiry date.