BIG EDGE
Photo by Cole Garside
“To me, that’s what gives us a big competitive advantage over the other companies,” says Oliveira, citing the plant’s growing output of industry-leading product lines offering pet-owners, institutions, livestock producers and veterinarians an incredibly diverse selection of high-quality products.
“We’re well-known in the industry for our innovative, performance-proven professional veterinary and over-the-counter products that we ship from here across Canada, the U.S., Japan … the whole world, actually,” Oliveira states, citing the apple-flavored Bimectin and Exodus dewormers as two of the bestselling non-sterile paste products made in Cambridge.
“We used to be more involved in providing third-party manufacturing of pharmaceutical recipes,” notes Oliveira, “and although we have gotten away from that in recent years, we still make some branded labels for clients using our manufactured product, which is exactly the same product with the same high quality.”
Because Bimeda-MTC annually reinvests a significant part of its revenue into new cutting-edge technologies, Oliveira finds himself spending a fair bit of time overseeing procurement of the best equipment on the market to keep the operation humming and staying fully-compliant with the constantly evolving regulations.
“Because being compliant in our manufacturing procedures is an ever-growing expense, I am always looking for ways to reduce our costs internally, and maintaining a more efficiently-run production line is a key part of that,” notes Oliveira.
“We have done that to a large extent by increasing the batch sizes of our production runs and utilizing more technically efficient machinery.”
Of all the innovative technologies installed at the state-of-the-art plant, Oliveira reserves special praise for the new Markem-Imaje SmartDate 5 thermal-transfer coder at his disposal—acquired in late 2008 to ensure faultless verification that all the products made there are not only distributed and used in a timely manner, but can also be fully traced to the original production source for full product integrity assurance purposes.
“It is absolutely imperative that each and every packaged product leaving our facility meets the required quality standards,” notes Oliveira, “which necessitate clear and legible display of all the vital lot and expiration date information.”
Photo by Cole Garside
Prior to purchasing the SmartDate 5 coder from the Mississauga-based auto ID experts Markem-Imaje Canada, the plant relied on a hot-stamp coding machine affixed to a separate labeler in a sub-par arrangement that sometimes
resulted in product codes rubbing off the packaging during transit or handling, Oliveira recalls.
“We needed a printing technology that would always be easy to set up and that would also provide us with good and reliable print quality,” he states.
“We went to three different vendors looking for a reliable and reasonably-priced printing solution, but after we investigated the Markem-Imaje products, we were quickly sold.”
Designed for continuous high-speed applications, with its dual stepper motor drive able to print at speeds of up to 1,800-mm per second at a resolution of 300-dpi (dots per inch), the plant’s SmartDate 5 coder was customized by Markem-Imaje by integrating it with the Carrera 500 PC horizontal flowwrapping packaging system, manufactured by ILAPAK Inc., with the help of a specially-designed bracket for a seamless fit to the existing packaging machinery.
“I believe our company was one of the first to purchase and use the new SmartDate 5 coder after it was launched,” says Oliveira, “and almost a year-and-a-half later, this robust coder is still running flawlessly for us.”
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