Pork Farms turns to Allen carton coder to deal with modern packaging requirements

- New system to replace older machine at Shaftesbury facility to provide efficiency gains in off-line carton coding in batches up to 10,000 pieces

 

- 4ACC carton coding system chosen to deal with requirements of new packaging for products such as Tesco southern fried chicken

 

Pork Farms, a UK manufacturer of Scotch eggs, crispbakes, cooked cocktail sausages and other foods, has invested in an Allen Coding carton coding system as it looks to make efficiency gains after replacing an existing machine that had reached the end of its working life.

 

Marketed as a “butcher, baker and master piemaker”, Pork Farms has chosen an 4ACC off-line carton coder to install at its UK factory in Shaftesbury.

 

Allen Coding is part of the ITW Coding & Marking Division, which also comprises Allen Spain, Norwood, Diagraph, Trident and Allen Germany.

 

Pork Farms said it chose the 4ACC carton coding system to deal with the requirements of new packaging for products such as Tesco southern fried chicken (pictured, top).

 

The Allen Coding 4ACC carton coding system uses a pusher plate system to pass cartons rapidly across a tabletop surface for coding before collating them for removal using a simple out-feed system.

 

The machine is equipped with a foil run out alarm and a pre-set batch counter, which may be set to count up or down for 10,000 items and will automatically shut off the machine after the desired batch has been coded.

 

A brushed metal easy-clean construction and mounted castor wheels make the 4ACC the ideal choice for use in the food and pharmaceutical sectors where cleanliness and portability are pre-requisites.

 

Simon Greenwood, chief engineer at Pork Farms, said: ‘The 4ACC has resolved the issue of code drift and wastage that we were experiencing with our previous labelling system, which had reached the end of its life span.’

 

He adds: ‘The best features of this Allen machine are its ease of use and ability to facilitate quick changeovers, enabling it to deal with numerous product changes each day. 

 

‘It was also easy to install, is simple to clean and maintain and is now operating at 40 to 50 cartons per minute, printing our date codes on to a variety of different cardboard packaging.

 

'Plus, the choice of coding options, such as the star wheel type code and intermittent thermal transfer offer extra flexibility.’

 

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