Packaging automation wasn't a concern for the hatters who built Danbury's reputation, but the scale they worked at would look familiar to a modern packaging line. By 1904, the city nicknamed 'Hat City' was turning out 24 percent of the nation's hats and 75 percent of its hat bodies, an industry that ran for more than a century before the last hat factory in town closed in 1987. Danbury's manufacturing base didn't disappear with the hats. A major pharmaceutical manufacturer is now the city's second-largest employer, running a production plant with about 2,500 workers, and aerospace components and industrial gases round out the top-ten employer list. Goods-producing industries still accounted for roughly 12,200 jobs, 15.4 percent of the workforce, as of 2016.

A pharmaceutical plant packaging cartons for a 2,500-person shift needs each carton formed, sealed, and set on a pallet without slowing the line. Our Pack Series case erectors and case packers handle exactly that volume, with PackMaster cobot palletizers building the pallet load right behind them. The same equipment serves the industrial-gas and aerospace-component manufacturers rounding out Danbury's employer base, wherever product ships in cases or on pallets rather than loose. Danbury doesn't have a PLAN IT plant of its own; producers here get machines and service from our Toronto and Tampa operations, the same setup we use across New England. A Danbury plant shipping pharmaceutical cartons, aerospace parts, or industrial-gas containers at that volume can replace a line still packed by hand, or one sized for a smaller run, with equipment built for what the plant actually ships today.