‘Egg‘ceptional efficiency

Poultry company Dagu had been searching for an ope­rator friendly and exceptionally reliable marking system to work 15 hours per day, efficiently marking its egg cartons with best before dates and batch numbers. The company chose Leibinger’s advanced Jet2 Neo continuous inkjet printer, which has exceeded expectations.

Dagu, founded in 1980, is based in Guadalajara (Spain). From its origins in the 1950s to the present day, the company has continuously evolved. Excellence, ser­vice, and food safety are the values that have made it a leader in its sector.

Today, Dagu is part of the Hevo Group, which produces over 70 million dozen eggs annually and employs nearly 500 people.

Luis Alberto Sanz, production mana­ger, said: ‘Our cooperative’s facilities are state of the art throughout the entire production process. We meticulously select raw materials, manufacture the best feed for our animals and produce eggs of the highest quality.’

A traceability system enables Dagu to keep permanent track of the farm of origin and the laying date of the egg. ‘Farm to fork’ traceability guarantees flawless control of quality and food safety throughout the entire production process.

Dagu had been searching for an operator friendly and exceptionally reliable marking system to work 15 hours per day, efficiently marking 200,000 egg cartons per batch with best before dates, farm information and batch numbers. Depending on the carton, different imprints were required. Another requirement was that all printers could be efficiently managed from a single PC via VNC (virtual network computing).

Dagu opted for an advanced solution from Leibinger’s official partner in Spain – Lusaro MarkColor – and now has 16 Jet2 Neo printers installed, one at each exit of the egg graders. ‘We greatly appreciate the high flexibility in printing different packaging formats and the simple, centralised operation of the printers. Service, delivery of consumables and coordination of all requests are ideally covered by Leibinger’s local partner Lusaro MarkColor. The collaboration is excellent,’ explained Luis Alberto Sanz said.

The customer designed the supports on which the electric actuator and the printers are installed which resulted in a highly flexible support for the different carton formats. A PC was placed on top of the sorting machine from which all the printers are managed via VNC.

The Jet2 Neo is a high performance solution for all standard coding and marking applications. Customers around the world have been using it since its introduction in 2000 to print data such as best before dates, production dates and lot numbers on up to three lines – with a variety of options and inks available.

The printer ensures fast, reliable performance combined with low energy and solvent consumption.