These barcodes are both smartphone and human readable with a simple scan.
Emerald Packaging, a leading supplier of fresh produce packaging, is now offering consumers who have smartphones an additional way to learn about their foods through the use of QR codes.
Scanning the barcodes helps consumers to discover the origins of the products they are buying.
The unique QR codes that are both smartphone and human readable, have become possible through Domino USA’s installation of digital ink jet printing equipment. The company, which is based in California, manufactures packaging and then supplies the pre-printed bags to various companies.
One of the companies that will use the QR codes on their packaging is Growers Express.
That is the organization that provides the packing for the major Jolly Green Giant food manufacturing brand. Growers Express has added its investment into the Bitjet+ inline digital printing system at Domino, in addition to its production line controller and its Editor GT injet, so that it can add unique QR codes to each of its product packaging bags.
The QR codes are created and supplied by Truetrac, a database and software management provider. These unique barcodes allow the consumer to obtain a variety of different types of information about the product, including everything from the location of the farms, to profiles of the growers, nutritional information, and food safety notices. Each of these codes is managed by the system before the Bitjet+ prints them onto the bags.
On the consumer side, a simple scan of the barcode will provide him or her everything they need to know about the product, right down to the field from which it was harvested.
The printing system was seamlessly integrated into the pre-existing package lines and could be used to produce variable, high resolution data, such as addresses, barcodes, QR codes, numbers, and graphics, onto a number of different types of substrate. This new type of printer was worked into the bag processing line at Emerald Packaging, which can now achieve a production of 150 bags per minute, without any manufacturing process interruption. All of the involved companies have expressed their excitement regarding this new partnership and its capabilities.
