Fairtrade tea manufacturer Clipper Tea has installed four more printers from the St Ives, Cambridgeshire-based coding and marking specialist Linx Printing Technologies.

Clipper used Linx’s CompleteCode leasing method, which covers all costs within one easy monthly payment. It brings to eight the total number of Linx printers operated by Clipper.

The Linx printers are being used to print ‘Best Before End’ dates and traceability codes, for internal use, onto cardboard boxes containing Clipper’s range of Fair Trade and organic tea bags. Linx Black fast-drying 1240 ink is being used and the production line operates eight hours a day, five days a week for 50 weeks of the year.

Steve Norris, engineering and maintenance manager for Clipper in Dorset, said: “Reliability, cost and after sales support were the biggest factors for choosing Linx again, when we were reviewing our current printer needs. We are a Fairtrade company and we believe in forming lasting relationships with suppliers.”

The Linx 7300 is designed to avoid the hidden costs of coding through the lowest possible running costs, minimised production downtime, error-free coding and future-proofing.

Among its features are dynamically adjusted service intervals to ensure customers only pay for vital maintenance, the Linx FullFlush® automatic printhead cleaning system, mistake-proof refills with the new SureFill® system and error-free code changes with QuickSwitch® software.

Service intervals of up to 6,000 hours are taken advantage of at the Clipper site, routine maintenance is minimal and, in contrast to other printers on the market, there are no expensive ink modules to replace.  Similarly, there is no need to change the ink tank between services, another ‘hidden cost’ with some coding equipment.

To combat downtime caused by production stoppages, the Linx 7300 uses its FullFlush system, which automatically delivers the most thorough cleaning and drying of the printhead and conduit at every shutdown. As a result, manual cleaning is typically only required once per month. Linx estimates that customers can gain up to one week of production uptime during the first year of installation, compared to a printer that requires daily cleaning.