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Evolution of coffee pouch and case coding

Latest-generation thermal transfer printers and case corner label printers/applicators enhance product identification efficiencies.

Thermal transfer overprinting delivers high-speed, high-quality coding to the foil coffee pouches.
Thermal transfer overprinting delivers high-speed, high-quality coding to the foil coffee pouches.

Caribou Coffee Company, Inc., Minneapolis, MN, is one of the largest specialty coffee companies in the U.S. It operates more than 500 company-owned locations, employs more than 6,000 people, and reaps more than $325 million in annual revenue.


As part of its efforts to meet growing demand for its products, Caribou Coffee wanted to improve its package coding and marking systems to enhance traceability. Rick Larsen, senior manager of engineering and maintenance, supply chain, at Caribou recognized that the package coding system they had been using was costly and sometimes not optimally reliable.


Caribou operates vertical form/fill/seal equipment from multiple vendors—including Fres-Co Systems USA, Inc., General Packaging Equipment, and LPT (Luciano Packaging Technologies)/Key-Pak. The coffee company uses a variety of pouch structures, including 2-ply silver metallized PET, 4-ply nylon, 4-ply PET, plus easy-open mechanisms. Most of these films are supplied by Fres-Co and Ultra-Flex Packaging.


Larsen recalls, “We had been looking to automate our 16-ounce and 12-ounce packages, as well as aiming to make the packages more appealing. But we were having coding issues, and the system wasn’t user-friendly.”


So when the company decided to switch to a new foil material pouch structure in 2003, Caribou also opted to institute new coding equipment, the SmartDate® 2 from Markem-Imaje, a thermal transfer overprinter that delivers high-quality printing to flexible packaging at high speeds. The SmartDate features advanced ribbon-saving features and is designed to deliver more prints per ribbon. It can print up to 1,000 mm per second and as low as 5 mm per second, able to accommodate extreme substrate acceleration/deceleration conditions.

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