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Coding versatility vanquishes packaging waste & downtime

Dutch Gold Honey installs centralized database ink-jet coding network to ensure the right code on the right package at the right time.

Small-character continuous ink-jet printers apply clear, crisp ID/tracking codes to the honey containers.
Small-character continuous ink-jet printers apply clear, crisp ID/tracking codes to the honey containers.

Dutch Gold Honey, Lancaster, PA, produces 11 honey varietals, an organic honey, and three varieties of maple syrup. The company manufactures its own brand and also contract packs for other brands. Billed as the largest family-owned honey company in the United States, Dutch Gold satisfies its customers with a broad spectrum of product volumes—from 8-oz plastic squeeze containers to tanker trucks of honey.


The company sources its plastic containers and caps from multiple suppliers to accommodate the diverse product range. Corrugated shipping cases are supplied by York Container.


All of the bottles and cases must be coded for identification and tracking and special seasonal promotions, and each customer has its own coding requirements. Due to its wide range of packaging types and coding criteria, Dutch Gold was encountering some product ID and shelf-life coding coordination and monitoring problems between primary and secondary packs. And packaging line workers had the time-intensive task of manually keying in the diverse coding information. Consequently, the company was having to scrap significant numbers of miscoded cases or reprint new labels to apply over the incorrect case labels.


Jim Gerlach, production scheduler at Dutch Gold Honey, notes, “We needed a better way to coordinate our bottle printers with our case printers. After working with Videojet for over 30 years, we’ve developed a strong relationship. So we looked to them to help us address this issue.”


Gerlach and Dutch Gold’s production maintenance manager Jose Torres worked closely with Videojet’s sales engineer Gary Miller and sales application engineer Randy Kaiser to evaluate the needs of the coding system and determine the best solution for networking the production line coding operations. This team of four first needed to consider the configurations of the primary and secondary printers and the customers’ unique coding requirements on the multiple production lines.


Together, the team came up with a complete coding solution that included upgrading both the production lines and the code printers and networking them through Videojet’s CLARiSUITE code assurance software. The software is designed to better coordinate Dutch Gold’s three Videojet 1510 small character continuous ink-jet printers for the multiple plastic bottle varieties and six Videojet 2350 large-character ink-jet printers for the multiple shipping case sizes and pack patterns. It pulls critical customer data from Dutch Gold’s database to coordinate production and coding operations. In addition, Dutch Gold uses CLARiSUITE’s Message Management feature to secure and streamline data management, enabling Gerlach and Torres to centrally create, store, and edit all messages as needed.

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