Page 15 - Beverage Master December January 2020

Craft Beverage

er allows brewers to print high contrast codes on
their bottles and cans while avoiding the difficulty
commonly found with traditional pigmented ink
printers. “

Shrink Sleeves With PDC International

PDC International is another company at the
forefront of an industry upon which many craft
breweries depend—shrink sleeve labeling. From
the moment the business opened in 1968, antic-
ipating customer needs is what the Connecticut-
based company has brought to its brewery clients.
PDC Founder Anatole Konstantin immigrated to
the United States from post-WWII Eastern Europe,
building his company out of the den of his home.
recently enhanced to print scan-able barcodes on
porous cases at higher speeds consistently.”

Stark says that in automating the printing of prod-
uct identification on cases, today’s brewers are also
looking at improving efficiency by integrating what
he calls “scan and select” capabilities into their
operation.

“This makes product changeovers, and subse-
quent print message changes effortless and free of
human error. A hand scanner is used to scan a bar-
code from a work order, which selects the correct
message to be printed on the case. This is often
paired with a barcode vision system which can
verify the readability of barcodes before they are
palletized and shipped to retailers, allowing a turn-
key case coding solution that will scale as breweries Neal Konstantin on the left &
continue to grow.” Bob Morse on the right

Craft breweries are also looking for innovation
when it comes to products that solve their primary Through vertical integration and in-house controls,
packaging identification needs, says Stark. including its own machine shop, PDC is known for
quickly solving customers’ production challenges.
“We also see a Neal Konstantin is president of the company his
growing desire for father, Anatole, founded fifty years ago. He says
high contrast date the widespread use of shrink sleeves, a technolo-
coding on bottles gy allowing a brewery to place its brand name on
and cans that are blank cans rather than having to inventory large
dark in color,” he quantities of pre-printed cans, saves warehouse
said. “With a focus space, simplifies logistics and saves money.
on freshness, an
increasing number “The recent widespread adoption of shrink label-
of craft breweries ing by breweries has resulted in machine refine-
are requesting to ments for labeling [either] full or empty aluminum
use yellow and cans of all sizes,” says Konstantin. “Special product
light blue inks to handling ensures that aluminum cans are not dent-
make the date code and other important product ed or marred when processed through the labeler.
information pop out to consumers. The introduc- PDC’s proprietary cutting blades now last millions
tion of the Linx 8900 Plus soft pigment inkjet print-
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