Coding and Marking Solutions for the Pet Food Industry

Extraordinary growth rates in the Pet Food Industry over the last few years come at a price. High efficiency of pet food production lines and flexibility to keep track with varying pet food product designs and materials are a must to keep up with the growing demand for quality from consumers and their pets.

Line efficiency

Printers are just a small piece of equipment in a large pet food production line but can become a bottleneck when something goes wrong – stopping the line for cleaning or maintenance of the printer is the last thing you want when trying to optimise your production line efficiency.

So, printer uptime and long print runs without cleaning or maintenance have been a key objective in the development of our latest generation of products. Videojet small character ink jet printers come with automatic printhead cleaning, significantly reducing cleaning intervals. Our thermal transfer printers have few wear parts, increasing their mechanical reliability and minimising maintenance-related downtime.

Refilling the fluids for our ink jet printers is quick, fast and clean due to Videojet’s Smart CartridgeTM system. The simple ribbon cassette design on our thermal transfer printers allow for ribbon replacement within seconds.

In addition, automatic calibration of printheads and easy to operate user interfaces reduce operator interaction and prevent time-consuming start up and changeover procedures.

All of these features lead to predictable maintenance intervals and ultimately to higher production line efficiency.

Flexibility

New pet food product developments often include a change in materials and artwork layout revisions. You need printers that deliver enough flexibility to adapt to today’s and tomorrow’s print requirements.

Videojet offers a wide variety of printing technologies. Our printers can be easily adapted to different pet food packaging substrates and coding positions, and most units are even mobile so they can be used at different steps in the production process. Together with the printers, Videojet offers printhead holders, brackets and other accessories that allow easy integration of the printers into your production line. Our aim is to provide you with a complete coding and marking solution that fulfils your printing requirements on existing pet food products and that can keep up with future product innovation.

Temperature

Seasonal changes in outside temperatures may also influence ambient conditions in the pet food production space. Videojet printers can operate in a wide range of temperatures. Heated and temperature controlled printheads and nozzles ensure that the print quality stays consistent, even if ambient temperatures change seasonally.

Supplies

Inks and ribbons have a considerable influence on the quality of the print – together with that of the overall pet food product quality. A good quality code is perceived as part of a good quality product and ensures your products can be identified throughout the supply chain.

Videojet offers a wide range of different inks and ribbons suitable for various substrates like metal cans, plastic foils or cardboard boxes, and some deliver additional features like inks that penetrate water or oils and fats, ribbons that print in different colors or inks that change their colour after reaching a certain temperature during the pet food sterilisation process. Since Videojet produces printers and inks in-house, we ensure optimum performance and superior print quality on your pet food products.

Here are a number of examples of print on different pet food products produced by various coding and marking technologies.

Metal

Cans | Pouches

• Small Character Ink Jet

Paper board

Cartons | Trays | Tubs

• Small Character Ink Jet
• Laser Marking

Rigid Plastic

Bottles | Cups | Tubs | Pots

• Small Character Ink Jet
• Laser Marking

Flexible Plastic and Foil

Bags | Pouches

• Small Character Ink Jet
• Thermal Transfer Overprinter

Cardboard

Corrugated board | Cardboard | Shrink & Stretch Wrap

• Large Character Marking
• Label Printer Applicator