Chicago's historic Union Stock Yard survived the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 without a scratch, an early sign of how central food processing and, eventually, packaging automation would become to Chicago's economy. Manufacturing, printing, publishing, and food processing still play major roles in Chicago today, and the city is world headquarters to more major packaged-food companies than almost anywhere else in North America, with output spanning candy, packaged snacks, and boxed cereal. A handful of large medical-products manufacturers are based in the metro too, adding pharmaceutical and health-product packaging into the regional mix, work that often calls for stick-pack or sachet lines suited to single-dose formats rather than bagged snack products.

That concentration of confectionery and snack producers is exactly the customer base PLAN IT's Pack Series flow wrappers and Mars Series VFFS baggers are sized for: high-speed wrapping for individually wrapped candy pieces, and vertical form fill seal lines for bagged snacks and granular confections. One of our case studies covers a confectionery producer that expanded its candy-packaging capacity using PLAN IT equipment, a pattern that fits Chicago's food-manufacturing base well. EliteWeigh multihead weighers add accuracy to weight-sensitive candy and snack runs, and metal detectors or X-ray inspection systems catch contamination before wrapped product reaches a case packer for palletizing. Our confectionery industry page, VFFS category, flow-wrapping category, and full solutions overview outline the equipment options for a Chicago-area production line.