Marken coding system brings better quality and higher efficiency to Lutosa

Lutosa-Van den Broeke, a famous Belgian food company, whose products range from the production of potatoes to various finished products (including frozen French fries, potato chips and fresh French fries), Marken's SmartDate, Cimjet and 5000 series coders. Packaging identification brings better quality and higher productivity.

Lutosa-Van den Broeke is a food company that produces from potato to various end products to produce frozen foods (mainly French fries), while Lutosa also produces potato chips and mashed potatoes, a full range of specialty products. And fresh French fries.

Lutosa is based in Leuze-en-Hainaut, Belgium, and was established in 1978. Its business volume has been increasing year by year. Lutosa acquired Primeur in St. Eloois-Vijve in 1988 and started its second production base. The biggest difference between Lutosa and its competitors is the quality of the product, the optimisation of production equipment and logistics services. Lutosa focuses on environmental protection, continuously explores performance improvements, invests in a purification system and uses green energy.

Each year, 530.000 tons of potatoes are produced and packaged into finished products. More than 85% of the products are used for export, and its development trend has far gone to China, Japan and Brazil.

Jacques Tilleul is Lutosa's project manager. His main projects include automation and industrial computer systems. He has been working for Lutosa in Leuze-en-Hainaut since 1986. “We have 12 production lines and 35 packaging lines. It has always been very important to us.We used it to print a variety of different information: product identification, expiration date, batch number and barcode.Before I came to Lutosa, it was manually coded, which caused many mistakes and caused customer complaints. In order to avoid these mistakes, it is necessary to turn to other coding systems, and soon we have adopted an automatic identification system that can be networked with our database. It is important to first play the right code on the correct product, and secondly. Meet product traceability.

“I was familiar with Markon through the SmartDate machine. We used to use the hot melt imprinting system to code the assembly line. It certainly caused a lot of trouble. I was always looking for a new coding system. At that time, Marken SmartDate was The only thing that made it possible to transfer data online was very easy to choose. We purchased a SmartDate and purchased many more quickly." “A few years later, we were going to replace the original ink coder and I started looking for high-end coding solutions. I have done a lot of research on various existing technologies. We are looking for a reliable system that requires little maintenance but can have good contrast codes. At the same time, online communication is also very important. We were soon attracted by Marken's thermal fusion technology, and the comparison of effect and coding quality was very good, and the convenient operation of SmartDate was also a starting point of our choice. We installed the 5000 type equipment, and the time of adhesion changed. Added new equipment and gradually replaced the old ink machine.

"We are very satisfied with Marken's machines. All systems have been connected to our database online since 1996. When an operator starts production, the code information is automatically updated with the machine, and this information is every 2 minutes. It will be updated not only for SmartDate, but also for 5000, which helps us to greatly improve the coding quality and efficiency.All operators only need to pay attention to the equipment, and if necessary, replace the printer printhead, cleaning and normal maintenance ."

Taking into account Lutosa's coding in the future, Tilleul particularly talks about traceability: "In accordance with the new law of traceability, we must code. This principle also applies to pallets. We use EAN128 barcodes to use on our cartons.

"In order to meet the requirements of our customers, we have to be more flexible, because customers always have more and more needs, we have the ability and are suitable for change. We are different for different languages, such as Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Russian.... There is also an increasing demand for coding. For these reasons, we have ordered a new printing labeler from Marken, the Cimjet system. We have Marken equipment that can be connected to a network via Composer and CimControl software." There has been a long history of cooperation between Tilleul and Marken. "The breakthrough in collaboration over the years was the use of SmartDate machines in 1996. Since then, we have been able to automatically manage the machine's real time without any manual operation. Lutosa is a pioneer in this industry! The change of the day was so amazing that the operator still manually changed letters and numbers the previous day, but the next day it changed the data online through the computer. This was a huge leap forward, and it was intelligence. The beginning of coding is also the beginning of full cooperation with Marken!"

Source: MARKEN