Want to go to Italy on a “business trip”? Sure, who wouldn’t? That was my thought, as I am sure it was others in our group, when one of our key global packaging equipment partners asked us to join them for an annual meeting to visit their factories in Italy.

Once the short-term excitement of the trip destination wore off, my focus turned to the obvious. What could I learn and take back to my organization that would help our team provide value to our customers and meet our annual objectives?

As each of the soon-to-be group trickled in from overnight US flights in Venice, we were met by the Robopac USA team. Even though it was a long flight, a renewed sense of energy was apparent as I became acquainted with the other guests. What we seemed to have in common when we met, I learned was so much more at the end of the week.

After a restful night sleep, we began our tour of various Robopac manufacturing facilities that dot the landscape from Bologna to San Marino and back to Venice. My understanding of Robopac’s semi-automatic stretch wrapper range was strong.  I knew enough to be proficient with their automatic stretch wrappers, but I was excited to hear more about what they had to offer in terms of packers, palletizers and laser guided vehicles (LGVs). These are targeted growth areas for our organization over the next five to seven years that we are confident will meet the growing needs of our customer base.

Seeing the overall capabilities of Robopac, while interacting and learning with other key distributors and customers was invaluable.  After witnessing the full scope of products, I can now plan for the known and unforeseen opportunities that are available for our sales team.

Our group was made up not only of distributor professionals, but also customers whose input throughout the week was invaluable. Customers communicated time and again that the internet and endless marketing messages make it hard to distinguish which end of the line packaging solution is the right one for their operation.

Making sure that your products arrive at their destination without damage is top priority for everyone. Not only does it save in product damage, but it eliminates wasted product ending up in landfills which is better for the environment. Discovering how Cube technology will maintain load integrity & wrapping parameters throughout the stretch wrapping process was an eye opener. Seeing with my own eyes how it addresses the four keys to successfully wrapping any load and how it will save my customers 30-55% in film costs made a huge impact.

The amount of investment in Robopac’s case packer, automatic stretch wrapping and laser guided vehicle operation was evident. I was blown away by the expert staff, passion, and most of all investment in R&D. The main innovation I will be taking back to my customer base is Robopac’s new Rconnect monitoring system. It will allow my customers to monitor and improve the performance of their stretch wrapping operation from anywhere via a remote app. Knowing how their machines are performing and quickly making corrections will save downtime and costs, providing much needed peace of mind.

I arrived with a healthy level of skepticism. I left a believer because of the proven innovation, product capabilities and overwhelming benefits that the Robopac product line will bring to any end of line packaging operation.