Confectionaries distributor saves valuable time and money with thermal-transfer coder.

Selling high-quality candy has long been one dandy way to make a living for folks at the family-owned Les Bonbons Mondoux. Founded in 1967 by family patriarch Norman Mondoux, the Laval, Que.-based distributor of high-end confectionary products has enjoyed a pretty sweet ride over the decades in the province of Quebec.

Without actually making candy itself, the company steadily rose through industry ranks as a packager and distributor of a wide array of candies, chocolates, cookies, nuts and other such products marketed under its own brand, and as private-label products for other snack-food companies.

With his sons Jean and Yvan also helping run the company, Norman Mondoux turned the enterprise into Quebec’s leading confectionaries marketer—culminating in 1998 buyout of its biggest Quebec competitor, Bonbons St-Jacques.

“This big purchase made us the province’s largest distributor of candy,” recalls director of finance Luc Deaudelin, “and when we bought Agence AB Luceville in Rimouski, a renowned wholesaler in the region, we had coverage over all of Quebec. Later on, we purchased Breuvages Mini Pop and, after all is said and done, we now cover about 85 per cent of the market in Quebec.”

To accommodate its growth, the company recently had to double the size of its existing 30,000-square-foot production plant—also housing the administrative office, a large showroom and storage facilities while its workforce had grown up to 115 full-time employees.

With annual sales now regularly in the $25-million range, Mondoux boasts an expansive, ever-growing product portfolio.

BIG MIX

This includes high-quality imported licorice from Spain, shaped in strips, bricks and straws, in fanciful flavors like sour, raspberry and watermelon; formed gummys shaped like stemmed cherries, motorcycle riders, cola bottles, and even baby pacifiers; the “mini-pop” flavored drinks packaged in easy-to-use, kid-friendly plastic pouches; and nutty snack-mixes of peanuts, cashews, pistachios and sunflower seeds.

Mondoux is also the Canadian distributor of the perennially popular Popeye Candy Cigarettes, which have been rebranded to the more politically correct Popeye Tasty Candy Sticks.

“We have got 50 trucks which we send all over Quebec to convenience stores to get orders and to ship candies and chocolates to,” sales and marketing director Yvan Sauvageau told Canadian Packaging recently.

“It is quite possible that some people think our candies and confectionaries are priced too high, but that’s only until they taste one.

“Then they know who’s getting a bargain.”

In the last few years, the company has successfully extended its market reach outside Quebec into Ontario, the Atlantic provinces, and on Canada’s West Coast, and last year it signed a deal to retail its products at Petro-Canada and Esso gas stations in the Toronto area.

In addition to maintaining an extensive product line, Mondoux also does a fair bit of seasonal packaging—repackaging candies and cookies in special gift-wraps for Christmas, Easter and Halloween.

With so many products on the go at all times, the company’s packaging lines have to run like clockwork, stresses Sauvageau, especially when it comes to product coding and marking.

“We used to use hot-stamping to put codes on primary packaging, which was usually messy and difficult to clean, due to the inks,” recalls Sauvageau. “We needed something that would allow the flexibility to change variable information, such as nutritional facts, ingredients and barcodes, for the different products, as well as be able to print on both sides of the packaging.”

After examining all of the product marking and coding equipment out in the market, Mondoux ultimately settled on the SmartDate 2i100 thermal transfer-coding systems, incorporating innovative digital-to-print technology, developed by Keene, N.H.-headquartered product identification specialists MARKEM Corporation.

Sauvageau says it was a wise selection, which enabled the plant to vastly reduce the inventory of films in storage, while boosting the overall packaging line productivity.

“At Mondoux, we pre-print our film that we use for bags with a Markem 2i100 printer, which we have mounted on our vertical form-fill-seal (FFS) equipment,” explains Sauvageau. “Generally, we utilize at least two of these printers for each vertical FFS machine we own.

“We currently have 21 of these coders in our possession, with a few more on order.”

As part of ongoing effort to keep its production costs in check, Mondoux uses the same type and color of plastic bags to package its many different products, with the clear surface area of each bag allowing the consumer to view the product inside.

“The other main difference is the information that we add with the MARKEM printers,” says Sauvageau, pointing to product descriptions printed in black ink on the front of each bag, and the barcodes and nutritional facts listed on the back.

“The MARKEM coders perform a high-resolution print on our packages at 300 dpi (dots-per-inch), without the need for temperature adjustments or realignments and, best of all, it doesn’t damage our bags with hot-type blocks,” says Sauvageau.

Ghislaine Voisin, Canadian marketing manager for MARKEM based in St. Laurent, Que., says Mondoux is doing very well to get maximum productivity from the thermal-transfer coders in its application.

“Where Mondoux has a great advantage is that they do not require a lot of different packaging for their jobs, so they save quite a bit of time avoiding downtime of having to change the films that make the plastic packages,” Voisin states.

“All they do is simply keypad whatever code change they need for a different product ... and presto!

“No more manual set-up of characters and alignment, and no more warm-up times, as the set-up requirements are quite minimal,” Voisin adds. “Moreover, the thermal-transfer technology prints codes, dates, times and barcodes onto flexible packaging material without smudging or causing environmental concerns.”

Covering a print area measuring up to 107x70 mm (4.2x2.8 inches), the SmartDate 2i100 coders can print variable product information at speeds of up to 0.3 meters per second (12 inches/sec), while offering automatic time and date coding capabilities for complete product traceability, and a high-precision foil advance feature to keep ribbon usage to a bare, economical minimum.

“Whenever a company launches a line, it typically needs to print a new bag and add ink for the product name, barcode and nutrient information on each one, which can be very expensive,” says Sauvageau, noting that using one bag type saves Mondoux a lot of money over the course of the year.

“What if you order new packaging for something that doesn’t sell? Then you lose money,” he reasons.

“At Mondoux, we use the same bag for a host of different products ... and we are quite profitable.

“For the majority of our products, we just order rolled film with no specs, and then we print the product name on the front and add a barcode on the back. There’s no set-up required, except for the product itself.”

By ANDREW JOSEPH, FEATURES EDITOR; photos by PIERRE LONGTIN
CANADIAN PACKAGING, APRIL, 2006

SmartDate Coders from MARKEM help Mondoux package sweets