Top 15 of 2025, #1: Once Upon a Farm Automates Case Packing for New Recycle-ready Pouches

The #1 most clicked article of 2025: This marketer of high-quality nutritious baby food and children’s snacks has found a way to improve case packing while also getting its toes wet in recycle-ready pouches.

Pat Reynolds

Jan 4, 2026

When eight pouches are in the flights of the lamella chain, all eight are pushed into a forming cassette where the case is formed around them.

Somic

Once Upon a Farm's spouted pouches of organic, dairy-free smoothies make for easy, resealable, on-the-go snacking.Organic snack food company Once Upon a Farm has come a long way in a short time to establish its brand and prosper. In just nine years, the privately owned company based in Berkeley, Calif., has achieved one ambitious milestone after another.

Since 2018, Once Upon a Farm has nearly doubled the number of outlets that sell its stand-up pouches of nutritious baby food and snacks for children. Looking ahead to satisfy future demand, the company in February of 2024 installed automated SOMIC Packaging 424 W3 wraparound case packing systems at two of the contract manufacturers/packagers it works with, one in Milwaukee and one in Orange County, Calif.

“We heard about Somic and the 424 machine at PACK EXPO, and I had prior interaction with Stacy Schmeiser, their west coast regional sales manager,” says Douglas Blake, director of co-packer engineering at Once Upon a Farm.

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