Multi-Flavor Variety Packs Made Simple

Some packaging challenges don’t stay in one facility — they scale across continents. For one customer, Aagard had already engineered two solutions that transitioned their product out of plastic packaging in the United States. When they needed the same sustainability-driven transformation overseas, the partnership naturally expanded to Poland.

This third system pushes flexibility even further. The customer needed the ability to run three different product flavors — A, B, and C — each with unique characteristics and flow rates. The machine had to handle hang-tab cartons, shelf-ready VersaCase® displays, and a co-bot palletizer downstream. It also required the capability to efficiently create variety packs, combining all three flavors into a single retail unit.

Aagard engineered a multi-width tray infeed that accommodates all three SKUs. To solve asynchronous flavor availability, the system can remove product directly from the production line and stage it into magazines — effectively buffering each flavor until all three are ready to run together. This creates a stable, efficient merge process and ensures consistent, reliable variety-pack formation.

On the retail side, the system supports both hang-tab and shelf-ready packaging formats, giving the customer multiple merchandising options without requiring a major footprint increase. A co-bot palletizer integrates seamlessly at the end-of-line to streamline labor requirements and optimize stacking patterns.

This project showcases how flexible automation can scale globally while maintaining consistency, sustainability, and performance. It’s a powerful example of how Aagard engineers systems that adapt to product needs, not the other way around.

We're ready to engineer a system to adapt to your needs. Contact us today!