Boxing with giants: Italy’s packing robots are not just cardboard cutouts

A CartonWrap machine, which packs customer orders in tailor-made cardboard boxes is displayed at a factory of Italian packaging company CMC Srl in Citta di Castello, Italy, June 25, 2019. Picture taken June 25, 2019. REUTERS/Remo Casilli

CITTÀ DI CASTELLO, Italy: Amazon’s new recruit comes from a medieval walled town in central Italy and can box and seal at least 600 items of different shapes and sizes every hour. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

That recruit is the CartonWrap, brainchild of CMC, a small firm that is just one of 630 Italian companies making automated packaging machines – one of Italy’s fastest growing industries, raking in nearly 8 billion euros in 2018, or about a quarter of the world market.