Barcoding gets better at Dairy Crest national distribution centre

Bill Whitelaw, senior shift manager at Dairy Crest’s NDC, says the centre – which dispatches 250,000 cases of dairy products on 2,500 pallets daily – needed an upgraded on existing barcode printing system, not only to improve standards, but to reduce downtime and maintenance costs, which were proving problematic. Dairy Crest says it selected Redditch-based KTEC Group for its digital roll labelling systems and barcodes, and because of a solution it proposed, based on Toshiba SX5 label printers. “We had some stringent criteria: we wanted printers that could not only print high quality barcodes, but also work in a challenging environment – 24 hours a day, 364 days a year,” says Whitelaw. Following go-live, 12 of the Toshiba printers, mounted on high stands for forklift drivers to reach, are now dedicated to automatically outputting pallet labels at the despatch gates. “We are very impressed with KTEC: they have demonstrated excellent technical skills and seamlessly integrated the Toshiba printers with our main computer systems,” comments Whitelaw.