SMART APPLICATIONS FOR LABELLING LINES

With so many similar label applicators on the market, can any supplier truly claim to have a unique selling point? Lynda Searby cuts through the sales spiel to see where the real innovation lies.

They might not score quiet as highly on sex appeal, but in some ways label applicators are like cars. That's the new of Richard Castle-Smith, UK national sales and marketing director with Weber Marking Systems. "Just as people who aren't all that interested in cars see them as something with a gearbox and a steering wheel that you get in and drive, for the uninitiated a label applicator just sits on the line and applies labels".

Up to a point, this basic description is true. However, to say there is little to distinguish one applicator from another is, as the analogy suggests, somewhat simplistic. For a start, it overlooks market dynamics. The market for label applicators has become a horribly crowded place of late, much to the frustration of some players.

"A number of companies that sell other machines have brought on board label applicators as an add-on and are often selling them cheaply because they're coming from places such as the Far East and Italy," laments Malcolm Little, managing director of Advanced Dynamic Systems.

GETTING THE COMBINATION RIGHT

However, what on the face of it appears to be a bargain buy may provide to be a false economy, because the applicator itself is only part of the story. "You have the best applicator in the world", says Little, but if you don't get your mechanical handling right, you won't get your placement right."

It's a view that is backed up by Castle-Smith, who believes that what sets the best apart from the rest is the ability to integrate the system into the production line. "There's nothing worse than a system that is high speed but the protocols don't work, it doesn't come up to speed and the label adhesive ribbon isn't correct when it's online", he says.

The doesn't mean there's no discernible difference in the quality and performance of the applicators themselves; there's still a top and bottom end of the market. In general terms, applicators that operate on older clutch and break systems are still deployed on smaller volume, lower-speed lines. But where high volumes and high speed are the objective, stepper or servo-driven applicators are fast becoming the status quo.

So once you've chosen between a clutch and brake or a servo, is that where the differences stop? Not so, according to Roman Eckols, president and chief executive of B&H Labelling Systems. He says that although many equipment suppliers have incorporated servo-drive technology into their equipment, not all have integrated it.  "It may be that they have simply replaced a previous variable-frequency drive with a servo-encoder driver arrangement on a single axis", he says.

With B&H's newest labeller, the Marathon U series, servo technology is used in a multi-axis scenario. Five independent servo motors and multi-axis timing control are said to ease operation, accelerate changeovers and improve reliability. "Differentiation comes not in the components but in how those components are integrated and in the quantifiable value this brings the end-user, the reduction of ownership costs", says Eckols.

Herma UK also claims to be boxing clever in the way it has incorporated a servo drive into its Herma 400 range of label applicators. The control module for the 40-watt heavy-duty servo is integrated within the housing of the applicator unit, without increasing its overall footprint. "This major advance means that bulky control boxes are a thing of the past and was achieved thanks to Herma-designed electronics, including a bespoke six-tier multi-layer circuit board," explains managing director John McAlpine.

The Herma applicator has other features that the company claims are unique. These include its patented inductive label sensor, which measures the difference in thickness between a label and its carrier. Herma says this makes the unit ideal for sensing clear labels on a clear carrier - even at very high speeds.

While some companies are focusing on improving the functionality of their label applicators, others are looking to new application areas for competitive advantage.

SLOW START FOR RFID UPTAKE

RFID arrived a few years ago, bringing with it great expectations for label applicator manufacturers. Several companies, including Weber and Avery Dennison, responded with RFID-ready label applicators, capable of printing, encoding. verifying and applying RFID smart labels to packaging.

However, according to Castle-Smith, uptake on RFID-ready systems has been slow and, following Tesco's announcement in April that it is no longer on track to roll out RFID in 1,400 stores by mid-2006, it is only going to get slower. However, for Weber, the RFID cloud has a silver lining, as the system the company developed for RFID has a spin-off benefit - the ability to reject labels prior to being applied. "With the vast majority of systems, a label is applied to a case, and then it is scanned to readability and accuracy. What we're doing is ensuring that the label going onto the product is absolutely correct, so it doesn't need to be scanned." He reports keen interest from the pharmaceutical industry, where products are often high-value.

Herbert Industrial has also observed growing interest in this area and can deliver systems that combine label application with online vision inspection, checking that printed information is correct, the right label stock is loaded and that secondary labels are present.

But the company's major focus at the moment is wraparound labelling, as major retailers move from cardboard sleeves to wraparound labels for fresh products such as meat and fish. "The labelling systems become a lot more sophisticated", explains managing director Andy Duncan, "because you've not only got to apply the label, you've got to wrap it around the pack as well".

The problem, according to Duncan, is that food manufacturers have no way of knowing how long a retailer will stay with wraparound labels on a particular product. The lighten the investment burden, Herbert Industrial has developed its Flexiwrap Labeller, which can run both conventional labels and wide-edge leading wrap-around labels at speeds of up to 70 packs/min.

Linerless labels - which eliminate the need for backing paper or adhesive labels - which eliminate as a focus for label applicator innovation. Sessions of York for example, has signed a licence agreement with Catchpoint, a company which is pioneering its own lineless label concept. In conjunction with these new labels, which eliminate the wastage associated with backing paper, Sessions recently launched a linerless label applicator to apply the cost saving labels in both top- and side - mounted modes.

Similar, Xact, a division of the Lawtons Group, has joined forces with Danish equipment manufacturer HM Labelling to bring the Linerfree system to the UK market. The first installation of the system was three years ago in Denmark, when Arla Foods installed one of the systems for carton and pallet labelling, and has since accrued savings of 30 per cent on labelling costs, including indirect savings such as fewer stops, fewer stock costs, faster label changes and minimal maintenance.

LIMITATIONS TO LINERLESS LABELS

There's no denying that the linerless label proposition sounds attractive - particular to the ecologically minded manufacturer. However, linerless labels do have their limitations, as Malcolm Little points out: "What it gives you is a perfectly cut rectangle. You can't do shapes, you can't go round corners, there's not the ability to make the "come and buy me" labels that products need.

That said, Little does acknowledge that they offer significant advantages to companies using secondary resealable labels - for example, on bags of paster. He says: "They are a brilliant tool for saving costs on the secondary use of the label and that's where I think hey are going to have their success"