In The Walt Disney Co.’s 2003 feature film “Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl,” lawless groups of sailors often remind each other to “keep to the code,” referring to the set of societal guidelines handed down by their pirate forefathers. In one scene, the pirate Captain Barbossa informs his lady hostage, who invokes the code to protect herself and her ransacked community, that one has to be a pirate for the code to apply, suggesting that it is more of a secretive, exclusive system. However, in the beverage industry, codes on packages are intended to do the opposite: They expose information to add clarity to the consumer packaged goods (CPG) system.
“Codes are used throughout the entire production process, from the empty container to point-of-sale and beyond, for numerous reasons,” explains Anthony M. Blencowe, business unit director for continuous inkjet (CIJ) at Wood Dale, Ill.-based Videojet Technologies Inc. “A beverage container will show numerous codes and inline prints — visible and invisible — on the container, the label and the cap, up to the wrap and multi-piece carton.”