Traveling between Chicago’s McCormick Place Lakeside, North and South buildings, a sea of more than 70,000 visitors from across the globe milled over packaging solutions at this year’s Pack Expo, sponsored and produced by the Packaging Machinery Manufacturers Institute. With more than 2,000 exhibitors displaying everything from converting machinery to packages and containers, the show offered solutions for beverage packaging challenges. Beverage Industry canvassed the entire show and here is a collection of innovative resources to handle a variety of packaging needs.

Standard-Knapp unveiled Pakmore, a continuous-motion case packer. The packer features precise servo product grouping, soft placement of bottles into the case and automated changeover. Additionally, the Packmore features a pressureless zero-gap infeed, an inline or peninsula layout and positive packing action for case bottom placement. — Standard-Knapp Inc., 127 Main St., Portland, Conn. 06480; 860/342-1100; standard-knapp.com

Wulftec/M.J. Maillis Group introduced the Smart Series, a semi-automatic stretchwrapper. The series features AC variable-frequency drives and motors, and heavy-duty steel construction. — Wulftec International, 209 Wulftec St., Ayer’s Cliff, QC, J0B 1C0; 877/985-3832; wulftec.com

R.A. Jones debuted the Wraptor Multi-Wrap machine, a paperboard multipack/wrapper for wraparound paperboard packaging. Wraptor’s standard features include metric design, left- or right-hand configurations and speeds as fast as 250 packs per minute. — R.A. Jones & Co. Inc., P.O. Box 485, Cincinnati, Ohio 45201; 859/341-0400; rajones.com

AmbaFlex showed visitors its Spiralveyor, which is a helical slatbelt elevator conveyor. Featuring continuous movement for lifting, lowering, indexing or buffering products, the Spiralveyor also offers one drive motor and many belt options designed to move product as fast as 200 fpm. — AmbaFlex Inc., P.O. Box 210578, Bedford, Texas 76095-7578; 877/800-1634; ambaflex.com

Seal-It Inc. offered a number of its color rotogravure and modified flexographic heat shrink PVC, PET-G and OPS films. In addition to shrink labels, the company has a line of tamper-evident bands, preforms, straight bags and seamed films for beverage packaging. — Seal It. Inc., 70 Schmitt Blvd., Farmingdale, N.Y. 11735; 516/935-3965; sealitinc.com

Ryson International Inc. featured the latest model of its spiral conveyor, bucket elevator and vertical accumulation buffer. The Spiral Conveyor is available in several widths to handle many products, it can go up and down, and it is reversible. — Ryson International Inc., 300 Newsome Dr., Yorktown, Va. 23692; 757/898-1530; ryson.com

Hartness International Inc., manufacturer of case packers and conveyors, also showcased its Hero Error Recording Online system for capturing and storing product line faults. Featuring four to 16-channel functionality and a touch-screen monitor, the monitoring system can be viewed remotely by as many as 10 users. — Hartness International Inc., 1200 Garlington Rd., P.O. Box 26509, Greenville, S.C. 29616-1509; 864/297-1200; hatness.com

Roberts PolyPro Inc. featured its 2-pack EasyLift Bottle Carriers for 2-liter bottles. The bottle carrier fits standard 2-liter bottles and can be printed with a UPC code. The company’s full line of EasyLift Bottle Carriers and the application equipment integrate directly into existing lines. — Roberts PolyPro Inc., 5416 Wyoming Ave., Charlotte, N.C. 28273; 704/588-1794; robertspolypro.com

MeadWestvaco Packaging Systems introduced FlexiTech as part of its pouch-filling solutions. The machine can produce as many as 600 liquid- or solid-filled pouches per minute and features two-lane, left- or right-hand infeed conveyors and Indramat servo drives. — MeadWestvaco Packaging Systems LLC, 1040 W. Marietta St. N.W., Atlanta, Ga. 30318-5273; 404/875-2711; mwvpackagingsystems.com

Krones Inc. debuted its modular labeling system, which combines labeling techniques such as cold-glue and pressure-sensitive labels in one machine; a Checkmat DART label inspection unit, which manages camera or sensor inspection. Also available was its Inline Sleevematic DS for high-speed glueless label applications; the Variopac 100 for high-speed tray/pad-packing and shrinkfilm applications; its PET-Asept Filling System for cold aseptic filling; and Krones Accutower Dynamic Buffer System. — Krones Inc., 9600 South 58th St., P.O. Box 321801, Franklin, Wis. 53132-6241; 414/409-4000;kronesusa.com

Vacuum Barrier Corp. introduced attendees to the Nitrodose liquid nitrogen injection equipment designed to pressurize inert packages. The equipment features round edges for liquid rolloff away from the package opening and stainless steel valve covers. — Vacuum Barrier Corp., Box 173, Newburyport, Mass. 01950; 781/933-3570

Thermo Electron Corp. introduced the Ramsey AC4000 Case Scale, which is designed to provide in-motion weighing of as many as 140 packages per minute that are as heavy as 150 pounds. — Thermo Electron Corp., 501 90th Avenue N.W., Minneapolis, Minn. 55433-8005; 763/783-2500; thermo.com

Orion Packaging Systems showcased three new machines: the SpectraMAX, the Vectra, and the RA Automatic. The RA Series of rotary tower stretchwrapping machines are designed to process 40 to 120 loads per hour. The Vectra, a semi-automatic turntable stretchwrapper, has a maximum load weight capacity of 4,000 pounds. The SpectraMAX automatically attaches the film on the load to begin the wrap cycle, and offers a maximum load weight capacity of 5,000 pounds. — Orion Packaging Systems, 100 Crescent Dr., Collierville, Tenn. 38017; 800/333-6556; orionpackaging.com

Schneider Packaging featured vertical case packers, horizontal case packers and robotic palletizing systems at the show. Its vertical case packer for gable-top cartons runs at speeds as fast as 30 cases per minute. —  Schneider Packaging Equipment Co., P.O. Box 890, 5370 Guy Young Rd., Brewerton, N.Y. 13029; 315-676-3035; schneiderequip.com

Domino Amjet displayed the JetArray Multiline Inkjet marking machine, a high-speed printer for address printing, as well as other coding and marking solutions using continuous inkjet and laser coders. — Domino Amjet Inc., 1290 Lakeside Dr., Gurnee, Ill. 60031; 847/244-2501; dominoamjet.com

MRI Flexible Packaging Co. offered visitors an opportunity to learn about its printing capabilities on polyethylene stretch-sleeve labels, polypropylene roll-fed labels, shrink sleeves and roll-stock. — MRI Flexible Packaging Co., 122 Penns Trail, Newtown, Pa. 18940; 215/860-7676

American Fuji Seal Inc. debuted shrink-sleeve, plastic insulating foam and plastic in-mold solutions for label production. The company offers shrink-sleeve application equipment and heat tunnels, in addition to labels. — American Fuji Seal Inc., 1051 Bloomfield Rd., Bardstown, Ky. 40004; 502/348-9211

SleeveCo displayed samples of its shrink sleeve labels as well as tamper-evident bands, preform and combo bands. It also had stretch-sleeve label examples available and information about its application equipment. — SleeveCo, 103 Lumpkin Campground Rd. N., Dawsonville, Ga. 30534; 800/624-0204; sleeveco.com

Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics featured a showcase of hose, tube and fitting products. The company offered Sanitary Couplers high purity hose, Flexible Components hose assemblies manufactured with Chemflour fluoropolymer tubing, and Tygon application specific tubing. — Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics, 460 Milltown Rd., Bridgewater, N.J. 08807; 908/218-8888

Exopack featured its line of paper and plastic packaging. Among the offerings were multiwall bags, plastic bags, stand-up pouches, plain or printed rollstock, and plain or printed shrink films. — Exopack LLC, P.O. Box 5687, Spartanburg, S.C. 29304-5687; 877/447-3539; exopack.com

Joining with Accu-Sort Systems Inc. to provide RFID application systems, Videojet Technologies displayed the Videojet Fast Tag RFID tag applicator. The Fast Tag encodes and applies RFID tags using a label applicator, an RFID reader and a reject identification and recovery system. — Videojet Technologies Inc., 1500 Mittel Blvd., Wood Dale, Ill. 60191-1073; 630/616-3657; videojet.com

Douglas Machine displayed the Contour Series S-30 Shrink-Wrapper, which runs at speeds as fast as 35 cycles per minute. The company also manufacturers case packers, tray packers, shrinkwrap systems and sleevers. — Douglas Machine Inc., 3404 Iowa St., Alexandria, Minn. 56308; 320/763-6587

Linker Equipment Corp. debuted rinser, filler and capper solutions for running hot-fill liquids and water. Additionally, the company provided visitors with information about its sleeve labeling system, and showcased its conveyor, case washer, unscrambler, uncaser and packer options. — Linker Equipment Corp., 5 Evans Terminal Rd., Hillside, N.J. 07205; 908 353-0700

PDC International Corp. debuted the R-500 Shrinklabeler, which applies shrinksleeves at speeds as fast as 500 to 600 labels per minute on a single in-line head. The R-500 can be configured to match unique product sizes and shapes such as round, oval and square packages. — PDC International Corp., 8 Sheehan Ave., Norwalk, Conn. 06854; 203/853-1516; pdc-corp.com