Custom Conveyor Systems for Packaging Operations
Packaging lines are where production meets the customer. Everything your facility manufactures, processes, or assembles eventually reaches a packaging line — and the conveyor system running through that line determines whether product ships on time or backs up into production. A well-designed packaging conveyor keeps containers, cartons, pouches, and cases flowing smoothly between filling, sealing, labeling, case packing, and palletizing stations. A poorly designed one turns every shift into a firefighting exercise of jams, misfeeds, and operators manually intervening where automation should be handling the work.
Custom Conveyor & Equipment Corporation has been solving these problems for over 40 years. We build packaging conveyors that work with the product you’re actually packaging — not a theoretical ideal product that never jams, never varies in size, and always arrives perfectly oriented.
The Packaging Line Challenge
Packaging operations face a combination of pressures that make conveyor design more complex than it appears from the outside.
Every machine on the line runs at a different speed. Your filler might run at 200 containers per minute, but your labeler only handles 180. Your case packer cycles at a different rate than your palletizer. The conveyor system connecting these machines needs to absorb these speed differences through accumulation — buffering product between machines so a momentary slowdown at one station doesn’t starve the machine downstream or flood the machine upstream. Getting accumulation wrong is the single most common cause of packaging line inefficiency, and it’s the area where generic conveyor systems most frequently fail.
Product changes constantly. A packaging line running a single SKU in a single container size at a fixed speed is easy to convey. That’s also a packaging line that doesn’t exist outside of textbooks. Real packaging operations change products, container sizes, label formats, and case configurations multiple times per shift. Your conveyor system needs to accommodate these changeovers with minimal downtime — ideally through adjustable guides and programmable settings rather than mechanical rebuilds.
The product is the problem. Round bottles fall over. Flexible pouches won’t ride flat. Lightweight containers blow off the belt near fans and HVAC vents. Sticky products grab the belt surface and resist transfers. Wet containers from rinsers or fillers reduce friction and slide unpredictably. Every product type creates a specific handling challenge, and the conveyor design needs to address that challenge for your product — not for a generic “container” that doesn’t behave like anything you actually run.
Packaging Conveyor Solutions by Function
Container Handling and Orientation
Getting containers from bulk supply — whether that’s unscrambled bottles from a depalletizer, formed containers from a blow molder, or pre-printed cartons from a magazine — onto the packaging line in the correct orientation and spacing is the starting point. We design laning conveyors that organize random container arrivals into single-file or multi-lane configurations. Timing screws and star wheels establish the precise container spacing that filling machines require. Dead plate transfers and air-assist conveyors move lightweight containers between sections without the tipping and tumbling that conventional belt transfers cause.
Accumulation Between Machines
Accumulation is where packaging conveyor design gets technical. The goal is simple — keep machines running by buffering product between them. The execution requires understanding each machine’s behavior when starved or flooded, the product’s tolerance for contact pressure during accumulation, and the recovery dynamics when a downstream machine restarts after a stoppage.
We design zero-pressure accumulation for fragile containers that can’t tolerate line pressure. Minimum-pressure accumulation for standard rigid containers that need dense buffering. FIFO (first in, first out) accumulation tables for operations where product sequence matters. Bi-directional accumulation that feeds machines from a central buffer in both directions. Each approach fits a specific operational requirement, and we match the accumulation method to your actual production behavior rather than applying one solution across all situations.
Elevation Changes and Transfers
Packaging lines frequently require moving product between different elevations — from a ground-level filler to an elevated labeler, from a high-speed line down to a case packer infeed, between mezzanine levels for different stages of a multi-step packaging process. Our incline and decline conveyors use cleated belts, sidewall belts, and bucket elevators selected for the product being transported. Spiral conveyors provide continuous elevation change in a compact footprint for operations where floor space is limited. Transfer sections between conveyors at different heights use controlled-speed transitions that prevent the product damage, tipping, and jams that occur at poorly designed elevation changes.
Case Packing and Palletizing Feeds
The downstream end of a packaging line — case packing, case sealing, and palletizing — handles heavier loads and larger packages than the primary packaging conveyors upstream. Our case handling conveyors use powered roller and belt configurations sized for filled case weights, with merge and divert sections that route cases from multiple packaging lines into shared case sealing and palletizing equipment. Pallet conveyor sections transport completed pallets from palletizers to stretch wrap stations and staging areas for shipping.
Product-Specific Design Considerations
We don’t build one conveyor design and adapt it to every product. Here’s how product characteristics drive our engineering decisions:
Glass containers require conveyors with smooth transitions that prevent the glass-to-glass contact that causes scuffing and chipping. We use single-filing conveyors and guide rails that maintain spacing between containers, with belt surfaces selected for the friction coefficient that keeps glass containers stable without excessive drag.
Flexible packaging — pouches, bags, flow wraps — won’t stand upright and can’t be guided with conventional side rails. Our conveyors for flexible packaging use flat belt surfaces with edge containment, bucket conveyors for vertical orientation, and flighted belt systems that maintain package spacing through irregular shapes.
Heavy products — full cases, pails, drums, bulk bags — need conveyors with structural capacity and drive power that most packaging line conveyors don’t provide. We transition from lightweight container conveyors to heavy-duty sections at the appropriate point in the line, with interfaces designed so the heavy section doesn’t create a bottleneck for the lighter upstream sections.
Integration With Packaging Machinery
A conveyor system for a packaging line isn’t independent equipment — it’s the connective tissue between your filling, capping, labeling, coding, inspection, case packing, and palletizing machines. We design conveyor sections that interface mechanically and electrically with the specific machines on your line.
Mechanically, that means matching conveyor heights, speeds, and transfer dynamics to each machine’s infeed and discharge requirements. Electrically, it means conveyor controls that communicate with machine PLCs through hardwired signals or network protocols, responding to run/stop commands, speed changes, and fault conditions so the entire line operates as a coordinated system rather than a collection of independent machines with conveyors between them.
Changeover and Flexibility
Packaging operations that run multiple products need conveyor systems that changeover quickly. We minimize changeover time through adjustable guide rails with marked positions for each product, quick-change belt sections for products requiring different belt surfaces, recipe-based speed and timing settings in the conveyor controls, and modular lane dividers that reconfigure multi-lane sections for different container sizes. The goal is getting your line back into production after a product change in minutes, not hours.
Built in Cedar Rapids With In-House Capabilities
Our fabrication facility handles the full range of construction methods packaging conveyors require — from lightweight stainless steel tabletop conveyor frames to heavy structural supports for pallet handling sections. Our 3kW fiber laser, 300-ton press brake, and multi-material welding capabilities produce the quality and precision that packaging environments demand, and every system is assembled and run-tested before shipping.
Talk to Us About Your Packaging Line
Whether you’re designing a new packaging line from scratch, adding automation to a manual operation, replacing worn-out conveyors that can’t keep up with your current production speeds, or troubleshooting accumulation and flow problems on an existing line, we want to hear about your operation. Call (319) 449-3322 or visit our contact page to start a conversation with our engineering team. We’ll ask about your products, your machines, your speeds, and your changeover requirements — then design conveyor systems that make your packaging line work the way it should.
