Lisa McTigue Pierce, Executive Editor

September 15, 2014

3 Slides

An easy-to-upgrade direct printer system lets this bakery add ingredients to doughnut mix bags on demand.

Krispy Kreme’s U.S. plant in Winston-Salem, NC, packages doughnut mix in 50-lb valve-type multiwall kraft bags measuring 19-7/8 x 22-1/8 inches. They fill 7,000 to 8,000 bags per day, and were printing the ingredient statements on the filled bags using a nine-head inline inkjet system. The batch identification, date and bar code were printed on the side of the bag with a large-character inline inkjet printer. Since this plant supplies 12 overseas locations, it must also print ingredient statements in multiple languages. Graphics such as the kosher symbol and Krispy Kreme logo are sometimes

Ingredient statements must be accurate and readable. Achieving consistent print on the irregular surface of a filled bag with online inkjet is difficult at best. For Krispy Kreme, aligning nine printheads to produce complete ingredient statements and product information was troublesome and unreliable.

Also complicating results, the software was not suited for printing in a variety of languages, including non-Latin script and characters, such as Arabic and Korea. The result was time consuming set-ups, poor print quality and rejected shipments at overseas locations.

With these ongoing problems, ads from Iconotech promoting its printing systems for replacing labels and/or pre-printed bags alerted Krispy Kreme to the existence of a different approach. Iconotech’s printing technology is a direct contact, plateless printing process that uses black and white line art to create print layouts in software supplied with each printer.

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About the Author(s)

Lisa McTigue Pierce

Executive Editor, Packaging Digest

Lisa McTigue Pierce is Executive Editor of Packaging Digest. She’s been a packaging media journalist since 1982 and tracks emerging trends, new technologies, and best practices across a spectrum of markets for the publication’s global community. Reach her at [email protected] or 630-272-1774.

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