Pack Expo features high-speed unitizing equipment

Stretchwrap and stretch hood machines on display at the annual packaging machinery show can unitize 180 pallet loads per hour.

By Corinne Kator, Associate Editor -- Modern Materials Handling, 11/3/2006

If speed is what you’re looking for in a unitizing system, exhibitors at Pack Expo may have the equipment you need. Lantech’s new RS-6000 strechwrapper and Lachenmeier’s Power Flex stretch hood machine were among the high-speed unitizing systems on display at the packaging machinery show in Chicago this week.

Bright yellow signs on the RS-6000 in Lantech’s booth branded the machine the “world’s fastest stretch wrapper.” The machine can wrap 180 loads per hour, cycling pallets in about 20 seconds, according to the company. The machine on display wrapped pallet loads of paper towels using extremely thin film (51-gauge) pre-stretched 250%, says marketing manager William Caudill.

High speeds and thin films “normally add up to film breaks,” Caudill says, “but we’ve never had a film break.”

The machine was developed for a major consumer goods manufacturer, he says, and will be available to other customers in January for under $200,000.

The Power Flex stretch hood machine from Lachenmeier, a Danish company with a U.S. office in Florida, also unitizes 180 pallet loads per hour, according to marketing manager Alice Holm Kristensen.

Rather than wrapping a pallet load with plastic film, the machine positions a flexible plastic hood above the load and then stretches the hood down over the load, encasing it completely. Lachenmeier’s machines cost between $150,000 and $200,000, according to Kristensen.

The hoods are more expensive than stretch film, she says, but they provide more consistent layering and better load stabilization—particularly on heavy loads such as the bricks and bags of fertilizer displayed at Lachenmeier’s booth. Because the hoods cover the top of a load, they provide good protection for products stored outdoors. The hoods are also more transparent than multiple layers of stretch film, says Kristensen, allowing better brand visibility for the products inside.