Replacing Labels With Direct Carton Marking

Dramatically reduce your costs and improve quality with low-maintenance solutions for direct carton marking.
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Label replacement with T-Series piezoelectric inkjet from Matthews Marking Systems

The convenience of printing-on-demand at a lower cost.

Direct carton marking eliminates the need for costly labels or carrying an inventory of pre-printed cartons; while providing tremendous convenience in printing variable information, such as batch information, date codes, or custom branding – making your production more agile. Direct carton marking with inkjet printers produces high-quality text, graphics, and barcodes on corrugated cartons, trays, and other porous materials.

A penny can add up to thousands of dollars of savings.

Or more correctly, saving $.015 per mark on five million cartons per year – at the cost of $.00056 for direct carton marking versus $0.0280 for labels – could save you $112k annually. That doesn’t even take into account error rates and repack costs that also factor into the high cost of labels over printing-on-demand. Saving just over a penny doesn’t sound like a lot, but it can quickly add up with volume.

Here’s a more in-depth sample cost breakdown of how replacing labels with direct carton marking can save thousands of dollars a year:

 

 

ProductionLabelsPrint on Demand Marks

Logistics Center Label Replacement Example
Number of lines 21 21
Volume of marks annually 5,000,000 5,000,000
Mark type 4″ high with graphic element 4″ high with graphic element

 

Cost InputsLabelsPrint on Demand Marks

Direct carton marking new equipment cost $840,000
Ave carton ID cost $0.0280 $0.0056
Annual operating cost $140,000 $28,000
Annual repack/exception lane volume 50,000 $10,000
Ave cost per repack $15/box $15/box
Total annual repack cost $750,000 $150,000
Annual error reductions 80%

 

Savings and ROILabelsPrint on Demand Marks

Operating cost savings of labels vs direct marks ($140k – $28k) $112,000
Net repack savings ($750k – $150k) $600,000
Total annual savings ($112k + $600k) $712,000
First year ROI ($840k/$712k) 85%
Time to total ROI 1.2 years

Label Replacement Solutions

MPERIA HE Controller - marking and coding automation platform software to enhance your overall traceability initiative when used with an industrial thermal inkjet printer.
Automation Software

Marking and coding automation platform centralizing control of your marking and coding, regardless of equipment technology or vendor.

T-Series Piezo Inkjet Printing System used for effective marking and coding and printing traceability marks and barcodes on products, cases, and cartons. Piezo inkjet printer, piezo inkjet printing, best high resolution inkjet printer.
High-Resolution Piezo Inkjet

A cost-effective alternative to adhesive labels and pre-printed corrugated boxes and cartons.

Industrial thermal Inkjet TIJ marking and coding printer. Industrial thermal inkjet printer..
High-Resolution Thermal Inkjet

Thermal inkjet coding of variable data, text, and graphics at unprecedented speeds.

1
Reduce downtime.

Our low-maintenance direct carton printers pair with MPERIA® for easy message changes without the downtime.

2
Lower costs.

Marking with labels is approximately 12x costlier than direct-carton marking. Eliminate the costs associated with delamination, and purchasing and storing labels.

3
Improve quality.

High-resolution quality and spot color for barcodes and graphics produce clean, highly visible marks, even on darker substrates.

Label Replacement In-Line Marking

Improved workflow efficiencies and cost savings, allows food ingredient company to seek further collaboration with Matthews.

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