
In January this year Jet Marking Systems announced two new partnership agreements, one with Australian based semi-automatic labelling equipment manufacturer Great Engineering, and another with Californian based company Epson Colorworks, who produce a range of colour printers that are designed to enable small and medium businesses to have full control over manufacturing their own labels.
Together these partners enable us to supply a complete on-demand single pass print and apply, pack and pallet production process for small manufacturers.
That’s because Great Engineering’s range of bottle labellers are the only label applicators in the world that can fully integrate with the Epson printers, (or in fact, any colour printer) allowing small and medium size manufacturers, for the first time ever, the capacity to create a single pass print, label & pack work-station that can produce finished product (for bottles, jars, vials, in fact any tubular shaped container) on demand!
This Means Synchronized Labelling & Packing with Orders
This on demand capability enables small businesses to get all the advantages of “just in time manufacturing”, which eliminates the need to bottle and store product to fill orders at some later time. Your entire label and pack process can now be synchronized with orders as they come in, reducing double handling by 3x and eliminating the need for warehousing. This is the very process that revolutionized car manufacturing in the 1970’s when it was introduced by Toyota, and it was responsible for huge decreases in the costs of production.
Translated into a meaningful outcome for the type of client that this solution would suit, a winery can now print, label, box and pallet 1 pallet per hour, in sync with orders as they are received.
This capability opens a whole range of benefits that can help small and medium sized manufacturers grow faster, cut costs and have all the advantages that independent in-house label manufacturing creates.
Benefits include:
- Reduction in double handling of at least 3x because it facilitates a single-pass production process
- New Product development is massively fast-tracked
- Fast responsive production line back-up
- Short run in-house custom labelling solution opening new high value markets
- Combine with a thermal printer and print variable information like batch codes, use by dates, and bar codes as you apply labels and much more.
Unleash the Creativity of Your Marketing Department
Every marketing department wants to test market new products and features that require adjustments to be made to labels. For example, new product recipes or flavours, new product names, competition ideas, sponsorship ideas, special offers, possible new release products and the like.
With the GE labelling machine and the Epson printer, your marketing department now has an in-house capacity that unleashes their creative capacity, fast tracking the growth of your brand and your product range. The benefits of this were recently expressed by Australian boutique beer brewer Tim Martin, one of the owners of the Tumut River Brewing Co.
“This process (custom in-house print & apply of labels) has revolutionised the research and development of our packaged beers, because all the inherent risks once associated with the process have been eliminated… Previously we’d have to involve a range of off-site professionals to produce a relatively expensive run of test labels if we wanted to test a new beer. Now we can make a new beer, name it, design a label for it and print and apply enough labels on product to have a new brew ready to test market in just a couple of days!”
See video https://youtu.be/OLWlVVkyiCc
Fast & Responsive Production Line Back-up Capacity
Production line breakdowns can come in many shapes and forms, but the portable and flexible nature of the Great Engineering machines makes them an ideal back up to automatic processes, or an easy to add on facility to increase production capacity when required.
For example, have you ever had the need to create labels fast? Maybe to fulfill an order from an overseas supplier than needs label adjustments for local compliance purposes, or for managing your own production shortfall or emergency? Once again Tim Martin From the Tumut River Brewing Co has an anecdote that underlines the value of having a print and label on demand solution at hand.
See video https://youtu.be/7YPGj7dsk4E
“Just before Christmas in 2018 one of our staff members told me we were down to one roll of labels on our most popular beer – the Ginga Ninga. Now we usually print these labels off site and carry 50,000 in stock, so to realise this shortfall just before Christmas could have been a disaster for us. Imagine having an “out of stock” sign on your most popular line in your most lucrative sales period! But our in-house print and labeling solution averted the crisis, we simply fired up the Epson printer and GE machines and ran off enough stock to see us through Christmas.
Short Run Custom Label solution opening new high value markets
Having an economical short-run label development capacity also means businesses can add custom labeling to their product range for things like corporate brands or Christmas gifts, weddings, fundraisers, anniversaries and other special events.
To explore the possibilities of a fully integrated print and apply of labels, contact our team at Jet Marking Systems today!