Boxing With Giants: Italy’s Packing Robots Are Not Just Cardboard Cutouts

Amazon’s new recruit comes from a medieval walled town in central Italy and can box and seal at least 600 items of different shapes and sizes every hour. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

That recruit is the CartonWrap, brainchild of CMC, a small firm that is just one of 630 Italian companies making automated packaging machines – one of Italy’s fastest growing industries, raking in nearly €8 billion in 2018, or about a quarter of the world market.

Machinery is Italy’s top export.

Both Amazon and Walmart are customers, though Ponti said client relationships were confidential. Others include the Italian fashion group Gucci, the French retailer Leclerc and the Dutch online shop Bol.com.

At up to 1,000 boxes per hour, CartonWrap machines not only pack much faster than humans; they also save money by reducing packaging waste, CMC says.

ESM