During its 164 year history, balancing tradition with innovation has been a constant challenge for Joseph Dobson & Sons, one of the country’s most successful and historic manufacturers of traditional confectionery. So, when the company was looking to address the latest coding and marking requirements for its range of boiled sweets, lollipops and branded throat lozenges, it turned to Domino to help keep its boiled sweets, lollipops and panned confectionery range up to date.
Established in Yorkshire in the 1850s, the family-owned business has worked hard over the years to preserve its original values and traditional sweet recipes while constantly adapting to the demands of the modern world, including the need for greater coding and identification of its products. This has seen the company, which is one of the largest privately-run confectioners in the UK, invest in a range of technologies from Domino. These include four V-Series Thermal Transfer Overlay (TTO) solutions, two G-Series i-Tech thermal ink jet (TIJ) printers, as well as one of Domino’s best-selling A-series ink jet coders.
“Working with Domino and its range of coding technologies has really helped us to grow as a business,” says owner and Managing Director Stephen Walshaw, who along with his wife Miriam, has helped to spearhead a successful expansion of the company over the last few years.
Gaining the British Retail Consortium (BRC) global certification for food safety and quality was a real turning point for Joseph Dobson & Sons Ltd, giving them the scope and credibility to expand the business. This has seen the company invest in new premises, new technologies and automated processes to sit successfully alongside some of its traditional sweet-making machines.
For Joseph Dobson & Sons, coding has become a key part of their production process, which was originally being handled manually using another brand of ink jet printer. Confides Stephen, “Using the previous system was a very slow and messy process; if you didn’t get the tubes aligned on the old printer, you’d end up with ink spray everywhere. We needed technology that would fit into our new automated packing and bagging lines and most importantly, print clear sell by and batch codes without interfering with production output.”
The company turned to Domino, initially trialling its V120i Thermal Transfer Overlay (TTO) printer, but soon decided to increase its investment to three additional V220i models. The V-Series TTO printers are installed on a series of high speed, multiform feeding and sealing lines which print sell by dates and batch codes onto the bagged sweets.
Domino’s V-Series i-Tech Ribbon Drive offers four ribbon save settings, including an ‘economy mode’ which facilitates a saving on ribbon usage of up to 60%. In addition, downtime related to ribbon break is virtually eliminated thanks to its unique ‘dancing arms’ which constantly monitors ribbon tension.
“The V-Series printers are perfect. They can easily cope with our high production speeds while producing extremely high quality, clearly defined print. In addition, the economy mode on the ribbon drive enables us to use every millimetre of film, eliminating wastage and significantly reducing our consumables costs,” explains Stephen.
Adding to its portfolio of Domino technology, Joseph Dobson & Sons also has two G-Series thermal ink jet printers integrated into its Rotech friction feeders for coding onto the primary carton packaging of its well-known brand of throat lozenges.
“The G-Series is a fantastic piece of kit; it just keeps running and running,” enthuses Stephen. “We’ve had one of our G-Series in place for the past four years, operating 16 hours a day five days a week and to date, we have had zero maintenance issues. What’s more the quality and flexibility of the print and capability to add extra graphics and 2D bar and QR codes will enable us to adjust to any additional coding requirements should we need to in the future.”
The company has also replaced its old ink jet printer with Domino’s world leading A-Series ink jet solution to work with its hand packed sweets. “It’s a far cry from the unreliable, messy product it replaced and my staff love it. It’s easy to use, clean, efficient, and starts up every time.”
Says Stephen, “Maintaining and indeed successfully expanding a business that is nearly 200 years old isn’t always easy. But when you can work with a supplier like Domino that not only delivers in terms of the reliability and efficiency of its technology as well as the excellent onsite support to oversee and guide us through installation, it certainly helps.”
“The Domino technology has surpassed all our expectations and has without doubt helped us as a business to achieve our goals.”