Leading gourmet tomato producer eliminates carton rejections and increases load traceability by 10%

By utilising innovative inkjet coding technologies, Koorelah Farms print high-resolution date and batch codes on every carton without fail.

Koorelah Farms is one of Australia’s largest growers of outdoor vine-ripened gourmet tomatoes. Situated in the Whitsundays region, the family farm was established in the 1950s and is an integral part of North Queensland’s farming community.

The tomato farmers pack up to 500,000 kilograms of produce each week for 24 weeks of the year, to supply the East Coast of Australia through the winter period, servicing supermarkets, wholesalers, and resellers.

The staff at Koorelah work hard to uphold their reputation as a market leader in the primary industries and use innovative technologies to elevate their operations and stay a step ahead of the rest.

In 2018, Koorelah sought to improve the quality of the batch and date codes applied to their cartons, in response to new traceability standards requested by their distributors. At the time, they were using a legacy large character coding system - the combination of both the older technology and the age of the machine itself resulted in a poor, low-resolution print which meant that one of ten of the date and batch codes printed on the cartons were illegible. This in turn caused NCR's (Non-Conformance Rejections) from their distributors, resulting in downtime and significant costs for both parties. 

“If a carton was sent to a state that had a certain protocol around produce acceptance, there would be a major non-conformance issued and we would be suspended from supplying that site until we had audited and were able to prove that we would meet the requirements of that protocol.” —Robert Lee, Koorelah Farms.

Partnering with their sister company, and Australia’s leading labelling and barcoding specialists, insignia, Signet introduced Koorelah to the Domino G-Series range, Thermal Inkjet Coders with the capability of coding directly onto their tomato cartons with a high-quality print every time, eliminating the need for carton labels.

The Domino G-Series range of Thermal Inkjet Coders are simple to use, low maintenance solutions that deliver high-resolution coding at the highest speed. This means Koorelah Farms did not have to sacrifice efficiency for quality and would be ensured a high-quality, legible print every time. They have a compact, modular, and robust design that allows them to be implemented into almost any production environment and easily adapt to an increase in production output. 

Koorelah has had zero NCR’s from their customer base since the implementation of the Domino G-Series and has improved the traceability of their pallets by 10%.

Signet is proud to share a partnership with Koorelah Farms spanning over two decades and will continue to work together on improvements to achieve the best results for their business.

“Signet helps us with quality products at affordable prices, reliability, and have the expert knowledge we need for our fast-paced packing and distribution line.”

Signet is proud to support Koorelah Farms and over 60,000 other Aussie ventures.

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