At Stonyfield Farm’s Londonderry, NH, facility, eight packs of Yo Squeeze are loaded into a printed folding carton by a new IH-2 cartoner from Elliott Manufacturing (Fresno, CA). The IH-2 cartoner was added last year to accommodate the stick packs. Cartoning is currently the only automated function downstream of the vertical form/fill/seal equipment.
Four packs discharge from one vf/f/s machine directly into a pocket of a new straight-line pocketed conveyor from Uni-Pak (Bradenton, FL). The conveyor advances before four tubes from the second vf/f/s are discharged into the same pocket. “The filler, conveyor and cartoner are precisely controlled,” says John Daigle, Stonyfield’s vice president of operations. “So when the filler makes four tubes, it sends an impulse to the conveyor to move, which sends a pulse to the cartoner. They’re all connected electronically so the timing works.”
