How the ACG fits into a production line
The ACG is designed to be invisible to your operators. It plugs into the existing Best Before Date printer using supplied cabling and starts working the moment the printer is switched on. The operator’s job doesn’t change — they print BBDs the way they always have. The ACG simply supplies a unique code each time the printer asks for one.
Installation: 10–15 minutes per line
A typical install per production line takes 10 to 15 minutes. There is no hardware to mount on the production line itself beyond the small ACG unit, no printer firmware change, and no production downtime. The unit is hot-swappable: if a unit ever needs replacing, factories carry spares and a swap takes about a minute.
We provide a factory audit before installation to confirm compatibility and to configure each unit for the production setup — the SKUs produced, the printers in place, the markets served. The actual install can be done by Hive IP, by your in-house team, or by the BBD engineers.
Printer compatibility
The ACG operates with all major makes of in-factory Best Before Date printers, including:
- Markem-Imaje SmartDate 5, X60 and X65
- Other major brands such as Videojet and Domino — we run a compatibility check during the factory audit before quoting
What the codes look like
Codes are 12 alpha-numeric characters: a 2-character prefix followed by 10 random characters. The prefix identifies which batch the code came from, so operators can confirm at a glance that the right batch is in use for a given promotion. Three example codes from the same batch (prefix HW):
HW4G9WF34E15
HW3T71F24A1B
HWZ261FMAC94
Each ACG can hold up to 26 batches, each configured to produce up to 250 million codes (more on request). A single unit is therefore capable of serving multiple campaigns over multiple years without firmware updates.
Security architecture
The ACG is a closed-loop, no-storage device. The only thing it holds is the algorithm itself — not a list of codes. Generation happens on demand; the code is transmitted to the printer; the event is logged. This is the most security-relevant property of the device: there is no list to steal because no list ever exists on the unit.
The same applies to the cloud side — validation reverse-engineers each submitted code algorithmically rather than looking it up in a table of issued codes. The systemic risk that has compromised entire campaigns at competing providers (large databases of issued codes leaking) does not exist in our architecture. Read more on the closed-loop architecture →
When the ACG isn’t the right route
The ACG is our recommended route for medium-to-high volumes — it’s where the savings, agility and security advantages compound most clearly. There are a few situations where the packaging-supplier route is the better fit instead: low-volume programmes, pilots, line-constraint cases, or brands that prefer codes printed inside the pack for aesthetic or risk reasons. See the packaging-supplier route →