Bread from a national grocery chain's own bakery, deli meats and dairy items packed at its Lakeland headquarters, and citrus-derived flavor compounds shipped to food and beverage manufacturers nationwide: these are among the products that make Lakeland a real market for packaging automation rather than just a truck stop on I-4. The city is home to one of the country's largest supermarket chains, whose corporate campus includes its own bakery, deli and dairy production lines instead of outsourced supply. Six international flavor-and-fragrance companies have also settled here, drawn by Lakeland's citrus-industry legacy, forming one of only two such clusters in the United States. That's a rare cluster. A major third-party logistics and warehousing provider is headquartered in the city as well, and an e-commerce air-cargo hub anchors more than 12,500 distribution and warehouse jobs along the I-4 corridor between Tampa and Orlando.

The grocery chain's own bakery, deli and dairy lines and the flavor houses turning citrus byproducts into flavoring compounds both need equipment that can bag, fill and case product without slowing down. Our Mars Series VFFS machines handle high-speed vertical form fill seal packaging for the bagged and pouched food products moving through Lakeland's bakery, dairy and flavor-house lines, and our automatic case packers take over once product needs to be cased and palletized for the region's distribution network. If you're running bakery, dairy or flavor-house lines here, you can draw on our full food and beverage industry solutions, covering everything from filling to inspection. Lakeland doesn't have a PLAN IT facility, but the same I-4 corridor that moves the city's bakery and dairy output to Tampa and Orlando moves our equipment and support to food and beverage producers across the state. Our Florida locations page and our solutions page cover the rest of that footprint.