Simply changing from compatible ribbon to genuine Toshiba product, Empire World Trade has not only reduced service costs by over half, but can guarantee the quality of labels, essential for supply of fresh produce to Tier 1 Supermarkets.

Renowned for excellence in fruit, Empire World Trade, import and pack apples and pears for all the major Tier 1 supermarket chains, labelling products and tray ends with a range of labels produced on Toshiba industrial printing products.

Mark Orton, of Empire World Trade commented on the decision to change ribbon product, We were persuaded by Nigel Wilson, of Reflex Systems, to the benefits of Toshiba genuine ribbon compared to compatible product, but to be honest we were sceptical that we would see any difference in terms of quality, and life of the print-head of the printer.

A long-standing user of Toshiba industrial printers, Empire World trade print a whole range of labels and cards, from tray ends to pack labels and polypack labels, producing in excess of 200K labels per day, running the printers non-stop for 13 hours.  With only 9 printers across the estate, reliability is key, any down-time having serious implications in the production process. Quality is also critical, with the potential for fines for any pallet errors, or refused pallets by the supermarket.

Orton commented, As you can appreciate, in our line of business, shelf life is very limited, a refusal by the supermarket for a non-scanned  barcode can not only lead to a per pallet fine, but a whole pallet of wasted produce.

The business expected to have frequent head changes on the printers with the volume of labels being produced, Mark continued, Typically we were calling out engineers on a weekly basis and replacing 14-15 heads in a 12 month period, some of the heads were not managing anywhere near the 100km warranty, at the time we did not realise this was excessive, or by simply changing to genuine Toshiba ribbon we could make such savings.

Reflex labels were able to 100% confirm, that Empire World Trade would be able to see immediate cost savings and improvements in the quality of the labels produced.  Nigel Wilson commented, ?We have experience of using the compatible product and have seen first hand the saving to be made by using genuine Toshiba product, I could be confident that Mark would see immediate improvements and make considerable savings on service visits.

Having now been using the genuine Toshiba product for 6 months, Empire World Trade have seen a reduction in engineer visits by 75%, from a call-out per week to one a month. Head replacement has dropped from 15 in 12 months to 5 in 6 months, over a 50% saving.

Mark continued,  We have always been really happy with Toshiba label printers, in particular the quality of product and standard of print, and would not consider using any competitor product. By simply changing our consumables to genuine Toshiba product, we have now superior quality print and a massive saving in service costs, thanks to Reflex Systems.

TOSHIBA TEC

Becky Viccars, Marketing Manager

Email: marketing@toshibatec-eu.co.uk

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