A significant growth strategy has been unveiled by Piepenbrock Packaging Technologies (PPT USA), which is expanding its presence in North America under its president, Thomas C. Rougeux.

The wholly owned subsidiary of the Piepenbrock Group, which is exhibiting at Pack Expo, which concludes tomorrow (21 October) in Chicago, operates as the group’s North American company for LoeschPack and Hastamat, providing technology solutions in the US, Canada and Mexico.

Furthermore, the group, including its LoeschPack and Hastamat businesses are making final preparations for Gulfood Manufacturing, staged at the Dubai World Trade Centre, between 3-5 November.

From its base in the Charleston, South Carolina area, the US division of the group handles sales, application engineering, installation, training and after-sales support. Customers work with one North American team that is backed by the same group that designs and builds the equipment. “We are not an outside representative.

“We are part of the same organisation as LoeschPack and Hastamat,” Rougeux said. “Our job is to bring that technology to manufacturers here and support it for the life of the line. Being based in Charleston keeps us close to customers and to the realities of North American production.”

For Pack Expo, LoeschPack showcased its high-performance CMT cartoning machine for dynamic market requirements. The C series machine can produce a variety of different display cartons. It erects flat carton blanks, fills them with prepackaged products, and then closes them.

The CMT can handle up to 1,000 confectionery, food, or non-food products per minute at the infeed, with an output of up to 200 cartons per minute. Thanks to its modular platform architecture, the machine can handle a wide range of formats and configurations, from products positioned horizontally, vertically, or on their sides to high-performance inline or 90-degree feeding and carton variants with or without lids. Its compact design also allows it to be flexibly integrated into existing production lines.

Furthermore, with its CP series multi-head weigher, Hastamat also presented a precise, high-performance solution for weighing and aligning a wide variety of products, from fresh and frozen foods to stick-shaped products such as salami sticks and celery. In the special version for stick-shaped products, the weigher provides precise weighing and fully automatic counting through to transfer into the packaging process – at rates of up to 250 weighments per minute and with up to 24 weighing hoppers. Defective products are automatically rejected.