Within beverage operations, the case packing operation has been a focal point for measuring the “salable cases produced.” In other words, an important statistic for determining productivity. The case material could have been wood, board or plastic, and was usually sized to contain two dozen containers of variable quantities to create a standard 24/12 case.
The operation involved simply placing containers into a case, with partitions or with units of six or eight containers. Called a drop packer, the machine fed containers through a patterned grid into an empty case. Advanced equipment provided producers with a variety of packing methods: continuous packing, vertical rotating and robotic machines using fingers lifting individual containers en masse into the case.