Square meal has traceability

Shire Foods supplies savoury pies, pasties and sausage rolls to professional football clubs and supermarkets. When the firm launched a new range of square pies packaged in silver foil trays, it wanted to print traceability information directly on the foil tray. That way its customers could cook the pies without having to refer back to the outer packaging.

Previously, colour-coded trays were used to identify flavours, but Shire Foods felt that this was impractical for stock management and product changeovers.

The firm already used Linx 4900 continuous ink jet printers to print code on to cardboard outer packaging and trialled the machine's ability to print on to foil.

"The printhead needed to be small enough to get between the conveyor and the product to code the side wall of the foil," says Shire Foods md, Michael Tzirki.

Results were positive, so the firm invested in two 4900s. Each one prints an 8mm high, two line code: the first details the product description (for example 'Stk & kidney', while the second comprises the batch code). The two production lines run at 15m a minute, accounting for around 50,000 pies a day from one line.

The company has received positive feedback from customers. "They like the advantage that anyone can read what type of pie they are baking without the need to refer to the outer packaging," explains Tzirki.