After more than a year and a half of absence at trade fairs, the Schubert Group, based in Crailsheim, Germany, is looking forward to returning to Pack Expo in Las Vegas. Since the beginning of the Corona pandemic in the spring of 2020, this will be the first ‘live’ trade fair presence on the North American continent for the packaging machine manufacturer. Due to increasingly growing customer demand for advanced automation and flexibility in packaging machines, the innovation leader in packaging technology will be presenting its compact lightline cartonpacker to a North American audience for the first time in Las Vegas. The preconfigured machine designed and built for the fast and flexible erecting, filling and closing of cartons and cases will be deployed by a North American contract manufacturer of ice cream bars and ice cream sticks following the trade fair.
This year, as a highlight, Schubert will be presenting its compact lightline cartonpacker for the first time at an American trade fair. The machine on display is part of an entire secondary and tertiary packaging line for contract manufacturer Hudsonville Creamery & Ice Cream and will be installed there after the fair. The product to be packaged with this solution in the future is from the Yasso ice cream brand, which is widely-known and extremely popular in North America.
Schubert’s lightline series consists of preconfigured packaging machines that are available immediately and can be delivered at short notice. These machines master standardised packaging tasks with great efficiency and high quality. The extremely compact machines enable customers to react quickly to market trends, at attractive investment costs, with a long service life and easy commissioning on site. As one of three lightline variants, the lightline cartonpacker flexibly packs products with specific packaging formats into cartons in the smallest possible space. The system that Schubert built for Hudsonville comprises four identical cartoners connected in series and two lightline cartonpackers. The flow-wrapped ice cream treats are first packed into 4-packs in the cartoners, followed by the packing of eight 4-packs each into a shipping carton in the two lightline cartonpackers.
Schubert will be presenting one of these maschines at the exhibition stand. “We were able to convince the customer of the machine’s exceptional flexibility. Because Hudsonville produces various brands of ice cream bars and ice cream sticks on behalf of third parties, flexibility is key to the versatile and profitable use of a new packaging machine,” explains Stefan Hoffmann, the responsible Sales Account Manager at Schubert North America. Visitors to the trade fair in Las Vegas will experience for themselves the advantages of the lightline machines and the consulting expertise of the experts from the Schubert North American team.
Another trade fair highlight is the exhibition of the world’s first ever pick & place robot in the historic "Pack to the future" pavilion at this year’s Pack Expo. “Roby” was developed by company founder Gerhard Schubert himself. As early as in 1970 and modelled on human anatomy and motion, Schubert began developing packaging machines that stood out with simple mechanics, high-level intelligence and the use of ideally matching tools. Strictly speaking, the celebrated 1981 Roby was an early pick & place robot. It would take another 15 years of development before the first official Schubert picker line was deployed: With the patented counterflow principle and fully automatic individual picking from running production, it was Roby that ushered in a new era in packaging technology at the interpack 1984 with its use in the world’s first chocolate packing line. This, along with many further development milestones, has since earned the packaging machine manufacturer from Crailsheim its position as global market leader in this segment.
