The last ten metres decide how much manual handling your customer has to pay for. We supply shrink wrapping, case packing, film wrapping, palletizing and depalletizing — matched to the output of the filling line so bottles never queue on the conveyor.
Packing and palletising are chosen on labour saving and consumable cost rather than on speed alone. Shrink wrapping gives a tidy, uniform pack with low film cost, but needs a shrink tunnel and the energy that goes with it. Case packing costs more per pack in cardboard, but protects the product far better over long sea freight and is what most export customers already expect when a container is opened. Stretch wrapping around a pallet is standard for palletised transport and the cheapest way to stabilise a load.
Which machine suits you depends on the bottle and the speed. Drop packers are fast and mechanically simple, but only for bottles that can take the impact; wrap-around and robotic case packers are gentler and handle a wider range of formats at a higher capital cost. Two items are consistently underestimated: the pallet specification, because a non-standard pallet size quietly undoes the automation, and the handling of empty pallets, slip sheets and top frames, which is where manual labour comes back into the line without appearing on any quotation.