Maxa Technologies plc (Maxatec), leading provider of receipt and label printing products, has supplied ANC with Cognitive Advantage printers to speed up the parcel labelling process in ANCs depots across the UK and around the world.

ANC is an independent business group, principally engaged in express delivery services throughout the United Kingdom and the rest of the world. The ANC group has 2 hubs in the UK dealing with up to 130,000 parcels per night.

The reason for change at ANC

ANC was using large, expensive, industrial label printers for consignment labelling and bar coding. They wanted to update to a more compact printer, with smaller footprint without compromising on speed and efficiency, and that was rugged enough to be used in a warehouse environment.

Various printers were tested and ANC selected the Cognitive Advantage printer from Maxatec. The Advantage bar code label printer fulfilled all the criteria - high speed, competitively priced, small footprint and rugged design. The Advantage printer was the superior price-performance solution.

ANC provides a Deliverance 2000 system, which includes software and label printer, to each of its customers. This system enables them to produce bar coded address labels and ensures total accuracy of shipment information.

Neil Clifton, Field Support Engineer at ANC said: ANCs operating divisions provide a comprehensive range of distribution and logistics related services to meet the needs of particular businesses and markets. We needed a very efficient printer system in place to meet all our demands.

The Advantages of the new system

The Advantage printer has an extremely low cost of ownership and is very economical to maintain.

The system is easy to use which means end-users dont require any training to operate the printer. ANC have around 3000 printers installed in-the-field, and their helpdesk receive very few calls related to print problems.

ANC use Advantage direct thermal printers. Direct thermal technology does not require the use of ribbons so costs are reduced and minimum time is taken to re-load the printer. Drop-in paper loading also means its extremely quick and easy to load new rolls of labels. Advantage printers can easily print 5,000 labels per day and are tough enough to withstand the rigors of logistics and warehouse environments.

ANC has also recently introduced the Blazepoint DUO printer from Maxatec for customers with larger sites, who need to print higher volumes of labels. The DUO prints at up to 10 inches per second and is capable of printing high volumes of labels per day. The DUO uses exactly the same labels as the Advantage, so users can order one type of media and drop it into either printer.

Maxatec programmed the DUO printers so no changes need to be made to the existing labelling software - the DUO can be used as a drop-in replacement where volumes of labels are high or a faster printer is needed.

ANC has approximately 85 depots now using Advantage and DUO printers for re-labelling and reverse collections.