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Flexible Pouch Coding Solutions From Rotech

1 min

Rotech team

The 'flex appeal' of pouches

Resealable pouches are going nowhere. Consumers enjoy the fact that they are easier to open, take up less space and offer better portion control.

Manufacturers benefit from the fact they can be transported and stored easier and that they are less susceptible to damage.

They’re also incredibly versatile and can be safely used to package goods spanning multiple industries, including personal care, food, horticultural and medical.

Seeing the benefits, many manufacturers are keen to repackage their products in flexible pouches. But with this move comes the challenge of how these products will be coded. Due to the flexible nature of pouches, they can be tricky to reliably code or label on-line, once they are filled.

Food pouches printed with best before dates using thermal inkjet technology

Horticulture ground rot bag printed with Thermal Inkjet

Pet food pouch printed with batch code and best before date using thermal inkjet technology

Pharmaceutical, medical sachets printed with GS1 code, serialisation, expiry, and lot numbers

Off-line pouch coding solutions

Within our range, we have several feeding systems designed to handle, print and/or label pouches in their flat-form, before they are filled (off-line).

The system best suited depends on a few factors such as pouch rigidity, size and what information needs to be applied.

RF Lite – Fitted with a thermal inkjet (TIJ) printer, the RF Lite is ideal for smaller pouches that only require a small amount of information to be applied, such as a best before date or batch code.

RF Pouch – Ideal for most pouches and bags. The length of conveyor means that the RF Pouch can be fitted with most coding technologies, including thermal inkjet (TIJ), Thermal transfer (TTO) and continuous inkjet (CIJ). It can also be fitted with a labeller. In fact, the RF Pouch can accommodate both a printer and a labeller if required.

RF Auto – Fitted with unique auto-gating technology, the RF Auto is well suited to rigid packs that feature varying thicknesses, such as resealable pouches or doy packs. It can also accomodate several different coding and labelling technologies.

To guarantee complete satisfaction, we will always ask to see packaging samples first-hand before selecting the solution.

Coding pouches on-line

For those pouches that don’t pose a problem when coding on-line, such as larger pouches of dried dog food, we recommend thermal inkjet (TIJ).

Advances in ink technology mean that TIJ can be used to print onto non-porous materials, leaving a long-lasting, high-res print.

TIJ printers are also very easy to integrate into existing packaging lines, due the compact nature of the printers. They’re maintenance-free too, meaning that downtime is kept to a minimum.

Large area pouch printing possible with the Integra PP Razr 34

Sometimes there is a need to print a larger amount of text or information onto the pouch, such as an ingredients list or large barcode. If this is the case, our large area printer, the Integra PP Razr 34 would be ideal. The impressive inkjet system can seamlessly print areas up to 34mm, removing the need to stitch printheads together.

The Razr is unique in that it can print such large areas on non-porous substrates – usually a TTO printer would be used for such an application.

For more info on any of our solutions, or if you would like further guidance on how to best code or print your flexible packaging, get in touch.

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