Coding and marking systems existed in various industries for over a long period, it includes food and beverages, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and others. These systems are crucial for product traceability, along with this, they ensure products are compliant with industry standards and deemed safe.

The coding and marking systems industry is projected to generate revenue worth $7,469.6 million by 2030. There are numerous other benefits of coding and marking systems, such as the display of important information. In addition, they are used to print batch codes of identical products with the same production time and location.

Coding and marking systems come with varying technologies to cater to the types of printing requirements. The right coding and marking system depend upon the product surface, quality, and efficiency. We have provided here description of several types of coding and marking systems technology.

Continuous Inkjet Printer: The continuous inkjet printer jets-controlled droplets of ink into primary packaging such as bottles, films, cans, and other primary packaging substrates. These are utilized to print expiration dates, lot numbers, barcodes, and production information. These printers facilitate the printing of clear and concise codes at a high speed.

Thermal Inkjet Printers: This technology utilizes ink cartridge-based systems to provide traceability information onto the product or its packaging, it includes logos, 2D codes, text, and barcodes. The TIJ printers provide support in reducing production costs by allowing printing onto cases and packaging and hence mitigates the labels requirement.

Drop-On-Demand Inkjet Printer: The drop-on-demand inkjet printer is a specialized labeling system that ejects discontinuous droplets by printing heads on the printing substrate to generate an image by the heat-induced explosion of ink bubbles. There are numerous advantages of this technology such as low cost, large character printing, compatibility with special inks, and high printing quality.

Print and Apply Labelling Inkjet Printer: This technology enables users to create and apply labels directly onto the product and its packaging. It includes barcodes, 2D codes, QR codes, alphanumeric codes, graphics, personalization, and addressing accurately and cost-effectively. It supports reducing scrap reruns, labor costs, and human errors with an increased focus on catering the customer requirements.

Laser Coding and Marking Inkjet Printer: This advanced technology is highly efficient, as it works on every surface such as wood, tin, cardboard, plastic, and others. It enables the possibility of printing everything such as text, numbers, dates, QR codes, data matrix codes, or logos. The permanent coding enables by it mitigates the risk of fading of barcodes or other markings. This technology is massively utilized in the FMCG sector as it enables coding at an extreme speed.

Coding and Marking Systems in Healthcare Industry

It is mandatory in the healthcare industry to identify and code products and packaging systems. The manufacturers of the product are required to code on items directly such as slides, syringes, UDI, glass, bottles, jars, blister packing, and other products, including their packaging. The most common utility includes lot code and best before date.

Coding and Marking Systems in Food and Beverage Industry

The producers in the industry are required to print clear data for traceability, and consumer knowledge, and ensure compliance with the FDA labeling regulations. Therefore, it has become crucial to adopt reliable food and beverage coding and marking systems to perform at high speed, for large volumes. Moreover, the expansion of e-commerce with increased demand for packaged food products leads to snowballing requirements of coding and marking systems in the industry for traceability.

Therefore, the permanent printing facilitated by laser technology is highly reliable with decreased cost and increase productivity at a high speed, and hence adopted widely in various industries. Moreover, marking and coding on products and their packaging is mandatory in the healthcare industry, and thus creates huge opportunities for marking and coding systems companies to expand their business.