When manufacturers analyse their production costs and calculate the amount spent on packaging materials, chances are they are overlooking a few important hidden expenses.

Whilst retail packs, packaging films and shipping cartons are perceived as being expensive and are therefore factored into costs, many producers fail to acknowledge the enormous sums of money spent each year on the apparently simple process of date coding.
Ink jet printing is the most widely used form of retail pack coding in the Middle East and though the capital investment for a printer is quite low, running costs typically amount to at least half the cost of the machine each year, possibly more for a large volume producer. Although ink consumption depends on the size of message and the print rate, ink costs are usually dwarfed by the cost of adding make-up or solvent to the printer.
High temperatures in the Middle East mean that the solvent base of the ink evaporates at a tremendous rate, as much as 12 ml per hour, which at today’s prices amounts to more than Dh4.50 ($1.2) per hour. So for a factory working 16 hours a day, 300 days a year, that’s an astonishing Dh21,600 per annum, plus ink cartridges, reservoirs, routine servicing etc. Manufacturers’ profits are disappearing, literally, into thin air.
Furthermore, if the printer is switched on, solvent use costs are incurred regardless of whether the production line is running or not.
As a consequence, more and more manufacturers are turning to laser coding, which not only eliminates solvent, ink and reservoir costs entirely, but is also a clean and odourless coding solution.
Laser coding of retail packs typically works in one of three ways: either by removing a layer of ink from the surface of printed card or tin to expose a contrasting base material colour underneath (ablation), melting of a few microns of the substrate, creating an image on the surface (engraving – typically used on PET bottles) or through chemical change due to heat (typically on PVC). The latter has an advantage on PVC pipes for example, where no matter what colour the base material, the applied code appears as a golden yellow colour.
 Recent developments have also led to the possibility of coding onto extremely thin films such as confectionery and biscuit wrappers without fear of puncturing the film. With products typically being coded at many hundreds of items per minute, the cost-saving potential in these industries is enormous.
The price of lasers has been dropping considerably over the last three to four years and they are now sold for around twice the cost of a good ink jet printer. With few moving parts, no pumps, nozzles or viscosity controls and no start-up or shut-down cleaning procedures, they are proving exceptionally reliable, so further savings are made through the elimination of downtime and spare parts stocks. Many come with a two- or even three-year guarantee, so service charges are removed from the equation too. There will be a cost for filters used by the laser’s extraction system, which removes dust particles and smoke generated by the coding process, but these will typically amount to one or two thousand dirhams per year – a fraction of the cost of owning and maintaining an ink jet printer.
All of the world’s leading manufacturers of coding equipment now offer laser systems but perhaps not surprisingly, many are actually reluctant to promote their use. After all, it’s in their interests to generate revenue through supplies of coding consumables and service contracts, even though they have a cleaner, cheaper and more reliable machine at their disposal. So the next time someone tells you “lasers cost too much”, perhaps you should ask yourself “they cost whom too much?”
In the UAE Al Thika Packaging supplies coding and marking equipment from Markem, a company whose products differ significantly from the most commonly used equipment in the Gulf.
Al Thika Packaging, distributor of packaging machines and materials to customers throughout the Middle East, was established in 1994 and moved to its purpose-built Al Quoz premises in 2002. The 8,000 sq ft facility includes a temperature-controlled warehouse for shrink and stretch films, air conditioned storage for coding and marking supplies such as thermal ribbon, plus a well-equipped workshop, spare parts stores, machine demonstration area and offices.
Growth in the end-of-line packaging sector has been strong over the last few years, since throughout the region, manufacturers have begun to automate processes, which had traditionally been carried out by manual labourers. The combination of difficulties in obtaining sufficient visas for labourers, coupled with ever-higher demands for productivity, means companies are turning to us to supply end-of-line solutions such as pallet wrappers or case erectors, which they would probably have not bought three years ago.
Other factors are also helping to fuel Al Thika’s growth – they have just taken on a third engineer, bringing their total staff to 10 – such as the demands on local food manufacturers to implement HACCP procedures.
A very large part of our customer base is in the food industry so we made the decision several years ago to offer a range of food safety products related to the packaging process. These now include metal detectors, infrared thermometers and data-logging equipment used to monitor storage and shipping conditions. Demand has become such that we appointed an additional salesman last year to deal exclusively with the food safety sector.”