Globally, the Bottling and Beverage sector is a large portion of one of the biggest industries in the world. The beverage and bottling sector is an extremely competitive market. If you want to succeed, your business plan needs to include a well-crafted supply chain. Every link in the chain needs to work in conjunction from the production line to distribution. Facilities that bottle and produce drinks can differ in the type of bottling lines and beverages they produce, but one consistent factor they all employ is the need to keep proper record of inventory, shipping and receipt of products. All of these applications are managed in multiple departments, so clear lines of communication and accurate reports are important to keep the supply chain moving. Whether it be in an office environment printing a report showing how many bottles, cases and products are produced and shipped each day, or on a loading dock printing a trucking report that shows the contents of each truck, reliable printing is important. Without documentation to show how much, when and where these beverages have been, chaos could ensue.

A common application employed in this industry is the use of multi-part forms to produce invoices and track chain of custody on products. Invoices are printed on multi-part forms daily for each truck and the truck driver takes the invoices for each location where they are delivering product.  The drivers have their customers inspect deliveries and then sign the invoice.  The delivery person gives one part of the form to the customer the other stays with the truck driver.  The Driver then returns the signed invoices to the office when they have finished their route, thus completing the chain of custody and keeping solid records of product transport. This process happens 1000’s of times a day and upwards of 30,000 pages need to be printed every month.

The Right Solution

With such high print volumes and the widespread types of environments where printing takes place, no ordinary laser printer could handle the job that the bottling and beverage industry demands. Line matrix printers deliver what this industry needs by providing speed, reliability and ruggedness all mixed with a low cost of printing. With 1,000s of different types of crucial reports, invoices and delivery sheets being printed daily, printer downtime is unacceptable. Many reports are required to be printed on non-standard paper sizes and green bar forms. With line matrix printers, standard and custom paper stock widths from 3 to 17” can be used to meet most report size requirements and delivery sheets can be printed quickly due to the high speed performance of line matrix printers (up to 2000 lines per minute). Since often times reports and invoices are printed on the fly in dirty, busy, sometimes harsh temperature loading docks, a printer that can withstand a harsh environment is also important. Line matrix printers are designed with this in mind; engineered to deliver non-stop performance and withstand humidity, temperature, static electricity, dust and other airborne particles which can lead to premature failure, frequent paper jams, print quality issues and more.

With the reliance on multi-part forms for delivery invoices being of the utmost importance, it’s no surprise line matrix printers are the best choice for the job. For example, with a laser printer a delivery invoice would have to be printed and filled out multiple times on separate sheets of paper, then gathered for a driver to take on their route. Once the delivery is made, the driver has to get the customer to sign multiple pages for receipt and finally bring one copy back to the facility, wasting valuable time and resources. Along with loss of time it also greatly increases the risk of misplacing copies, having incomplete information, and accidentally mixing customers invoices. The use of a multi-part forms eliminates these problems. Line matrix printers provide the most reliable source for creating multi-part forms. Laser printers cannot produce these forms in one pass. With a line matrix printer the user can print up to 6-part forms in one pass with high-quality, easy to read text and graphics, without compromising output speed. Print quality and style can be easily adjusted to meet the demands for any particular report. Since line matrix printers have SAP® compatibility along with other enterprise host platforms, on demand invoices can be printed right on the production or loading dock floor.

For over 40 years some of the biggest names in the bottling and beverage industry have trusted Printronix line matrix printers to take care of their printing needs. Line matrix printers will continue to be the toughest, most reliable printers on the market for customers in industries worldwide.