‘When a complicated label, like a piggy back label, is specified it’s important that the end user’s requirements are absolutely clear. It’s vital that trade customers trust Piroto to talk directly to their customers in the interest of getting the label spec absolutely spot on.’
Customised piggy back labels improve material traceability
The Customer
Our customer is a trade customer who we work closely with on a number of specialist labelling projects. We have developed an excellent working relationship and continue to collaborate on projects where Piroto’s expertise in manufacturing complex, customised adhesive labels helps our customer provide end to end solutions to their clients.
The end user is a packaging supplier specialising in manufacturing paper bags using eco-friendly materials. They use huge quantities of paper in the production process; stored on vast rolls in their warehouse.
The Customer’s Challenge
At the time we spoke, the packaging supplier was using a manual traceability system to trace their raw material through the production process and to the end product. Their aim was to move to a more robust traceability system using barcode labels.
Each vast roll of paper is split down into a number of smaller batches which are then made into individual paper bags. An innovative labelling system would need to be developed to ensure that each batch of end product could be traced back to the original raw material roll.
Our Approach
The Piroto team has many years of experience in creating traceability labelling systems, and are experts in the field. They first took the time to visit the end user’s site to get a full understanding of their traceability needs and see, first hand, how the paper bag production process worked.
Once fully versed in the user’s needs , the Piroto technical team set about developing a piggy back label with five integrated adhesive labels. A material was selected that would over-print well and ensure that each barcode label would scan successfully for full traceability.
What we delivered
The Piroto technical team specified a machine coated paper piggy back label that would run smoothly through the user’s thermal transfer printers.
The piggy back labels consists of a main body adhesive label that is over printed on-site with a set of unique barcodes, and attached to each vast paper roll. The label includes five separate integrated labels, each printed with the same unique barcode, that are detached from the main label and attached to the batch of paper being used for a particular job. Each of the five integrated labels has a clever ‘tab’ so that it can be easily lifted from the main body of the piggy back label and attached to each batch by the operative.
The impact on the customer’s business
With technical knowledge of multi-layer adhesive label design and years of experience in developing traceability labelling systems, the Piroto team was able to provide a sophisticated solution to meet the end user’s needs. Specific benefits to the end user, and our trade customer, include:
- The end user improved their raw material traceability system by moving from a manual approach to a scannable barcode trace system, so saving them time and money where issues with a batch of paper bags needed to be traced back to the raw material
- The end client also benefited from a customised piggy back label that met their specific needs exactly, so cutting down the time taken for operatives to manage the traceability system
- Our customer strengthened their relationship with their client as they were able to offer an end to end solution
- Our customer benefited from a trust relationship with Piroto; we spoke directly with the end user, so reducing the time and cost it would have taken our customer to deal with the work involved in specifying a complex piggy back label.