When Solway Foods was looking to expand production at its multi-million Manton Wood Enterprise Park plant in Nottinghamshire, it chose to run with Harland Machine Systems whose label applicators were already providing “exceptional service” at this and the company’s other plants.

There are seven busy packaging lines at Manton Wood. Two lines use existing Harland Neptune applicators transferred from Solway’s Corby factory, another has a new Neptune and a fourth a new Comet applicator.

The three Neptunes are transferring top and bottom mark and code labels to a leading supermarket chains’ range of triangular sandwich packs. The Comet has the rather more delicate task of “top and bottoming” flow packed speciality bread sandwiches, such as ciabatti.

Sally Mitchell, factory manager, said: “The company has been making sandwiches for retail outlets for many years. At Manton Wood we have always used Harland’s mark and coding labelling heads because they are so reliable.

“We can’t afford to have any hold ups with perishable goods passing through. We have a lot of confidence in the Harland labellers and we like to keep our machinery as standard as possible.

“We already had four machines here which we were running day in and day out, 16 hours a day. They are very reliable so we didn’t hesitate to buy more new Harlands.”