Giles has now standardized on S7 ink-jet printers from Imaje (Kennesaw, GA) because previous systems the firm tried would not print reliably. The two most recent S7 printers installed, in Jan. ’00, are used to imprint paperboard sleeves.
“We used to print dates and batch numbers offline,” says production coordinator Jonathan Clifton. “That meant the [magazine] had to be emptied and refilled with printed sleeves for the new batch at every changeover. This was not only a time waster, we often had to discard more than five percent of the sleeves because they were printed with outdated information. With the Imaje equipment, the operator simply selects a pre-set product and pack program and enters the use-by date and batch number on the keyboard. What used to take several minutes now takes seconds. And there’s no waste.”(PR)
