Cruga supplies about eight million bags of biltong each year to major supermarket retailers. It also packs jerky for its partner company, The Jerky Group. To reduce packaging costs, it uses a range of generic pouches that it overprints with a barcode and data denoting product-specific information. This gives it the flexibility to respond to changes in customer orders while minimising wastage.

Pouches are fed past the thermal transfer printer using a tight grip belt mechanism to ensure that there is no pouch movement. The feeder stops briefly each time a pack moves under the print head so the pouch is stationary at the moment of printing, increasing accuracy and quality. 

Cruga owner, David Low says: "We now have a top quality printer unit that can print barcodes on thousands of pouches per hour and that can be run by one operator."