Market Trends – Cartoners

  • Suppliers in the cartoners market are focused on bringing more innovation, in terms of new and efficient products
  • The market for cartoners is highly competitive, thus, pushing suppliers for more product innovation

analysis-cartoners

Pick-and-place cartoner

AND&OR introduced new EPA cartoner that can pack, either empty bottles or filled bottles into cartons. The picking head is designed according to bottle formats and is able to pack bottles with no neck ring, heavy bottles, and empty light ones thus, offering reliable machinery for the beverage industry.

Ultra quiet and ergonomic cartoner

Recently, Romaco introduced their Promatic PCI 915 intermittent motion cartoner in Interpack 2017, which has the ability to eliminate noise and vibration to a great extent. This machine has a small footprint with capability to load cartons at height of 1.2 meters. The machine also requires no lubricants for any cleaning operations.

Robotic Cartoning

ADCO provides rotary cartoners to industries that features a collaborative robot (Cobot) from Universal Robots. This cartoner is especially suitable for repetitive-motion picking and placing applications.

Complete robotic monoblock carton forming/loading/closing system

CAMA introduced a fully robotic monoblock system for carton forming, loading, and closing toward the last quarter of 2016. This new CAMA IF318 system features lean design, cabinet-free technology with ergonomic properties and user-friendly controls.

Hygienic Cartoning

Langen Group introduced a packaging equipment that has been designed to provide a range of advanced packaging solutions for applications, such as bag-in-box, flow wrapped products, stick packs, pouches, frozen food in one machine. It is a hygienic machine design, which includes an ergonomic carton magazine.

Industry Drivers and Constraints

The packaging industry is being driven by changing customer needs and regulations with respect to machinery and materials during the packaging processes.

Drivers

  • Changing consumer needs: The global economy, especially in developing countries, is witnessing a rise in disposable income, which results in a higher demand for a wide range of packaged goods. So, a diversification of consumer needs in relation to the packaging quality and functionality acts as an additional catalyst for the packaging machinery market
  • Regulations: Majority of developing countries, such as India, China, etc., have been adopting regulations that impacts machinery and materials. Some of the major regulatory focus include preventing contamination during packaging process or maintaining quality of products
  • Growing technological advancements in machines: Machine sales is also fostered by growing technological advancements in packaging equipment that are process/cost efficient and adding to sustainability. Multifunction machines and machines with quick changeovers are becoming more common, and companies in the recent times are procuring new machines to make their process efficient. This trend is likely to take upper hand in the near future

Constraints

  • Increasing cost of equipment: The cost of high tech and customized packaging machines have risen in the recent years. Replacement and spare parts sales make up to 20% of the total market, but lack of channel partners weaken the sales network in emerging regions
  • Rising input costs: As the packaging needs across user groups and geographies are varying rapidly, the machines are also being customized to meet the needs of changing consumer preferences. However, with catering to these needs, various input costs, such as, raw material costs, labor costs, energy and power costs, etc., are also rising significantly. As a result, industry players in the packaging machinery market have to constantly look for machines that optimizes power consumption to meet the emission standards and also automate the processes to spend less on labor, etc.