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Making eggs more affordable

Simpler ink-jet coding systems cut costs for Hidden Villa Ranch, which supplies overwrapped egg trays to small chain stores.

Printing of batch-tracking and sell-by dates has become less costly and more reliable for Fullerton, CA-based Hidden Villa Ranch since the addition of three ink-jet Jet-a-Mark® coders from Matthews Intl.

Representing the second upgrade since HVR’s San Jacinto, CA, plant manually applied stickers to each package, the new coders provide a cost-effective imprint on egg trays overwrapped with printed film. Earlier, the plant had installed another ink-jet system, but discovered that it was costly to buy and operate because it offered features the plant didn’t need or use.

“Our first ink-jet printers were quite expensive, and they offered a lot of functions that we didn’t use,” says Ron Petersen, HVR branch manager. “So we started to look around for simpler, less costly printers, and we eventually found Matthews. Although these were originally designed for printing onto corrugated boxes, they worked out well for printing on our film-overwrapped trays.”

Now in operation for more than a year, the Jet-a-Mark S.C.I.F.I. 3200 printers require less than half the time to start up, shut down, clean, and maintain, Petersen points out.

Although the company has some 800 different ways to sort and pack eggs for various market requirements, the ink-jet printers are primarily used on its Conflex L-sealer overwrapping systems for 20-, 30-, or 60-count trays. The firm also employs a heat tunnel from Belco.

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