Pirelli stick with the barcode business to solve Drum Labelling Issue

Pirelli Cables produce electrical cables - from extremely high to low voltage, for land, submarine and overhead applications - along with a vast range of accessories, and is the leader in turnkey projects of underwater links.

They were experiencing severe problems sourcing labels suitable for sticking to their wooden coils to identify the cable it contained. They found that labels attached on production were detached by the time they got on site, leaving their customers with a major identification problem. As such many rolls were returned from site for replacement giving them additional costs to bear as well as extremely unhappy customers.

As an existing supplier of other labels to the Group, the barcode business were called in to work on the project. We began by analysing the whole process and identifying a range of materials that could possibly work for Pirelli. Several materials were selected for live trials and we produced a small sample from each.

Factors considered were:

• How does the label stick to the wooden coil
• How do we print the variable information at production
• How will this information react to severe weather

The trials were conducted over a 2 month period during the most severe weather conditions - 1 material performed far better than any other. This was selected for full-scale production with excellent results in the short term, but it has also stood the test of time with some coils pre-printed over 5 years ago still showing all the original identifications.