How Custom Automation Is Powering the 2026 Packaging Industry Boom
Elsner Engineering: Quality Custom Automation Since 1934
Packaging is having a moment. After two years of supply chain whiplash, labor turnover, and consumer demand shifts, the packaging industry has emerged as one of the most aggressive adopters of new automation in U.S. manufacturing. The investment is not flowing into standardized end-of-line equipment. It is flowing into custom-engineered systems designed for the actual products, materials, and plant realities packaging operations now face — a fundamental shift in what packaging automation looks like.
The pressures driving this shift are easy to identify but harder to solve with catalog equipment. SKU counts have exploded. Consumer preferences favor smaller packages, faster product launches, and more sustainable materials. Labor availability has collapsed in many regional markets. Customer specifications change faster than packaging machinery refresh cycles. And regulatory expectations — particularly in food, beverage, pharmaceutical, and medical device packaging — keep tightening. Each of these pressures rewards flexibility and process specificity, both of which favor custom automation over off-the-shelf packaging machinery.
The Numbers Behind the Packaging Automation Surge
PMMI, The Association for Packaging and Processing Technologies, has documented the scale of the shift across multiple industry reports. According to PMMI's 2025 State of the Industry report, U.S. packaging machinery demand is expanding, with manufacturers prioritizing practical solutions to efficiency challenges while contending with workforce constraints and rising equipment prices. Hiring and retention difficulties affect both original equipment manufacturers and end users, with many companies seeking compact equipment designed to fit existing plant footprints — equipment that is easy to operate and maintain.
PMMI's 2025 Top to Top Summit data adds clarity to the strategic priorities. Roughly 78 percent of packaging industry leaders cited productivity as their top priority, followed by cost control and automation, each named by approximately 47 percent of participants. The same period saw the Association for Advancing Automation report that food and consumer goods robot orders jumped 105 percent year-over-year in the third quarter of 2025 — by far the strongest sectoral growth in the entire North American robotics market. The packaging industry's automation investment is no longer a trailing indicator of broader manufacturing automation. It is leading the curve.
PMMI's 2025 Inside the Workforce Gap report identifies the shortage of skilled technical workers as one of the most significant barriers facing packaging manufacturers. Retirements of experienced staff have accelerated since the pandemic, turnover among new hires remains elevated, and competition for the technicians who can install, troubleshoot, and maintain modern packaging lines has intensified across nearly every regional market. This workforce reality has direct implications for what kind of automation packaging operations can actually deploy successfully.
Why Standardized Packaging Equipment Cannot Keep Up
The packaging machinery catalog economy was built around a different production reality than what most U.S. packagers now operate. Catalog equipment optimized for long runs of stable product specifications struggles when SKU counts triple, package geometries diversify, and changeovers happen multiple times per shift. The result is equipment that runs below rated capacity, requires frequent operator intervention, and either limits the operation's flexibility or simply gets replaced earlier than its useful life suggests.
Custom packaging automation responds to this reality by building flexibility into the machine architecture itself. Quick-change tooling, recipe-driven controls, vision-guided product handling, modular conveyance, and integrated quality verification can all be specified for the exact product families an operation runs — not for a generic theoretical product. The result is equipment that maintains rated throughput across a wider mix of products and changeovers that take minutes instead of hours.
The broader case for custom-engineered systems applies across U.S. manufacturing, but packaging illustrates it with particular clarity. Why Off-the-Shelf Automation Is Failing U.S. Manufacturers in 2026 examines the underlying economics driving the shift away from standardized equipment, and packaging operations exemplify nearly every condition that makes custom automation the better answer.
The Industries Inside Packaging Driving Custom Demand
Different packaging sectors face distinct pressures, but each is converging on custom automation for its own specific reasons.
Food and beverage packaging operations face the most intense throughput, sanitation, and SKU complexity demands. Product launches have accelerated, sustainability mandates change packaging materials, and food safety regulations continue to tighten. Custom automation handles the wash-down requirements, hygienic design, and rapid changeover capabilities that food packaging plants need but catalog equipment delivers inconsistently.
Pharmaceutical and medical device packaging faces stringent regulatory requirements that custom automation engineers design in from the first concept. Serialization, track-and-trace, tamper evidence, and validated production processes are standard expectations. Catalog packaging equipment frequently requires extensive modification to meet these requirements, while custom systems incorporate compliance from the start.
Consumer packaged goods packaging operations face the SKU explosion at its most severe. A single CPG plant may run dozens of variants across multiple lines, with frequent introductions and reformulations. Custom automation built around flexibility and quick changeover serves these operations far better than catalog equipment designed for stable, high-volume runs.
Industrial product packaging — automotive aftermarket, hardware, fasteners, industrial chemicals — faces less SKU pressure but more product variability in size, shape, and weight. Custom material handling, palletizing, and case packing systems handle this variability natively, while catalog equipment often cannot accommodate the full product range without separate dedicated lines.
What Effective Custom Packaging Automation Includes
Custom packaging automation is more than custom mechanical design. The most effective systems integrate several engineering disciplines that catalog equipment typically separates.
Mechanical engineering covers the actual product handling, indexing, and packaging operations — designed around the specific product family, not generic dimensions. Controls engineering handles the PLC programming, HMI design, and data integration with plant systems. Vision systems verify product orientation, package integrity, and label placement. Safety engineering accommodates the actual workflow operators will use, not a theoretical workflow assumed in a vendor manual. Robotics integration brings collaborative or industrial robots into specific tasks where their flexibility adds value — typically pick-and-place, palletizing, case packing, or quality inspection.
Successful custom packaging projects also account for sanitation, maintenance access, and operator ergonomics from the first concept. Wash-down requirements, tool-free changeovers, accessible adjustment points, and clear sight lines for operators all need to be designed in rather than added later. These details often separate packaging cells that run consistently from packaging cells that look impressive but underperform in production.
Manufacturers evaluating broader automation strategy in the context of reshoring momentum can see related dynamics in Reshoring Is Reshaping Mid-Atlantic Manufacturing — Custom Automation Is the Catalyst, which examines how regional reshoring trends are amplifying packaging automation demand specifically.
The Path From Packaging Pain Point to Custom Solution
Packaging operations considering custom automation typically follow a predictable path from pain point to specification. The starting point is rarely the equipment itself — it is a process problem the existing equipment cannot solve. Throughput limitations during peak season, recurring quality escapes on specific SKUs, changeover times that have grown unacceptable as mix has fragmented, or compliance requirements that current systems cannot document reliably.
From those starting points, a structured automation project moves through process assessment, concept development, detailed engineering, fabrication, validation, installation, and commissioning. The most successful packaging automation projects involve operations, quality, maintenance, and engineering teams from the manufacturer working closely with the automation engineering team — not just purchasing handing off specifications and expecting a finished cell to arrive months later.
The economics of this approach are different from catalog equipment purchasing. Custom automation projects typically take longer to specify and design, but deliver substantially better outcomes once installed. The total cost of ownership over the equipment's useful life almost always favors custom for operations facing the SKU complexity, regulatory pressure, workforce constraints, and product evolution that define modern packaging manufacturing.
Elsner Engineering: Your Partner in Custom Packaging Automation
Elsner Engineering has designed and built custom automation and packaging machinery from our Hanover, Pennsylvania facility since 1934. Our Paco Winders product line and custom automation projects serve packaging operations across food and beverage, pharmaceutical, medical device, consumer packaged goods, and industrial product markets.
Our Services Include:
- Custom Automation Machinery — Turnkey automated packaging systems engineered around your specific products, materials, and plant constraints
- Paco Winders — Industry-leading winding and rewinding equipment for packaging, paper, film, and specialty applications
Ready to Solve the Packaging Problem Catalog Equipment Cannot? Contact Elsner Engineering to discuss how custom automation can deliver the throughput, flexibility, and compliance your packaging operation requires.
Works Cited
“2025 Packaging State of the Industry: U.S. Expands, Canada Maintains Strong Base.” PMMI, The Association for Packaging and Processing Technologies, www.pmmi.org/news/2025-packaging-state-of-the-industry-u-s-expands-canada-maintains-strong-base. Accessed 25 May 2026.
“Performance of Emerging Technologies for Robotics.” National Institute of Standards and Technology, U.S. Department of Commerce, www.nist.gov/programs-projects/performance-emerging-technologies-robotics. Accessed 25 May 2026.