S&A Group upgrades coding with ICE

S&A Group is the largest independent berry and asparagus grower in the UK, supplying over 40 million punnets of fruit to its customers in 2014.  As well as growing its own produce, the company also sources it globally in order to provide the highest quality produce all year round.

The 18 Zodiac printers, integrated with Proseal GT2 Twin traysealers, are being used to print variable information directly onto film on heat seal trays. They have replaced inkjet coders printing onto pre-printed labelled lids, a process which S&A Group found was not able to cope with the increases in the volume of produce it was experiencing. 

S&A Group pack house manager Fred Williams said: ‘As a growing business, we needed a faster and more efficient operation that could cope with increased throughput at busy periods. It’s also much more cost effective to print onto film and it reduces the waste on pre-printed materials.’

S&A Group has also installed barcode verification scanners to check the information is correct before produce is transported. ‘We consistently achieve high quality prints – proof that the ICE coders are doing a good job,’ Williams added.

S&A Group has also benefited from fewer coding errors due to the CLARiTY touchscreen operating system on all ICE coders, which controls the way operators can edit the variable print fields available. The sell by date, best before date, fruit variety and grower code can be inputted using pre-defined fields which the operator selects on the screen.  Dates may only be adjusted as allowed by a concessions system, while the other fields are chosen from a pre-defined list.  The features help to simplify the operator’s task and reduce the risk of coding errors, ICE said.

‘We quickly realised the benefit of switching our coding system after the first two Zodiacs were installed,’ concluded Williams. ‘We’ll always go for ICE coders as they are good machines.  We have less downtime and errors and the print quality has always been consistent.  With our service contract we also benefit from regular maintenance visits from their engineers to keep the kit in excellent working order.’