Providence's population more than tripled between 1865 and 1900, climbing from 54,595 to 175,597, as immigrant labor from Ireland, Germany, Sweden, England, Italy, and Portugal built out the city's machine-tool, jewelry, and silverware trade. That growth needed packaging too. Packaging equipment is a smaller-scale version of the precision manufacturing Providence has specialized in since it became one of the first U.S. cities to industrialize. By 1900, the city hosted some of the nation's largest manufacturing plants: producers of precision machine tools and files, silverware makers, and steam-engine, screw, and textile manufacturers all ran large operations here, drawing on the same skilled labor pool the city still trains today.

Providence today runs a more service-based economy, anchored by eight hospitals and eight higher-education institutions, but its manufacturing base never disappeared. That precision workforce now supports the CPG and consumer-goods producers and co-packers running automated lines across New England. That precision now shows up on the packaging line as much as the machine shop floor: Mars Series vertical form-fill-seal (VFFS) packaging machines handle bagged and pouched product, our automatic case packers keep cartoned goods moving onto pallets, and our palletizing systems stack finished loads for the dock at the pace a modern plant needs. You can review the full lineup on our Rhode Island location page, and our solutions page explains what goes into specifying a line for a plant this size.