Replacing Labels With Direct Carton Marking
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
| 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
Marking and coding automation platform centralizing control of your marking and coding, regardless of equipment technology or vendor.
A cost-effective alternative to adhesive labels and pre-printed corrugated boxes and cartons.
Thermal inkjet coding of variable data, text, and graphics at unprecedented speeds.
Direct Carton Marking Print Samples
Label Replacement In-Line Marking
Improved workflow efficiencies and cost savings, allows food ingredient company to seek further collaboration with Matthews.