Keeping Merz Packaging Machines Moving at 900 Sachets Per Minute

Merz manufactures high-speed packaging machines for the pharmaceutical, cosmetics, and food industries. For more than twenty years, the company has relied on tailored KEB drive systems to achieve demanding throughput goals, including a remarkable 900 sachets per minute on the SB18-2T snus form, fill, and seal machine.

Packaging is a part of everyday life. Just think about the thousands of products you see when you shop at the store. From food and beverage to pharmaceutical and personal care products, almost every item relies on sealed packaging to protect product quality and maintain consistency from production to purchase by the customer.

While many consumers don’t think twice about what choices went into the design and how it got to them, manufacturers do. For machine builder Merz, developing efficient and reliable systems capable of high-volume of product is the focus behind each design.

The Company

Merz Verpackungsmaschinen is an engineering company based in Lich, Germany, that’s well known for its high-quality, reliable packaging machinery. Founded in 1971, the company designs high-speed packaging systems and manages the entire machine-building process from engineering and manufacturing to sales.

Their versatile machines produce high-speed stick packs and multi-sided sealed bags for applications in the cosmetic, tobacco, food, and chemical industries.

The Challenge

Manufacturers rely on packaging machines to maintain production speed and product quality. For the machine builder, like Merz, that means consistently designing and delivering systems that can operate in demanding environments and deliver consistent output.

Many of these machines must coordinate high-speed processes such as feeding, sealing, cutting, and material handling while maintaining repeatable performance with minimal error. A single poorly coordinated axis can create downstream defects, machine stops, or quality failures at full speed.

To achieve this level of precision, Merz partnered with KEB for a high-performance drive and control solution. The system provides the synchronized motion and rapid communication necessary for the SB18-2T snus packaging and SBL50-2 stick pack machines, ensuring reliable operation within a compact control cabinet footprint.

Customized Automation Solutions

KEB offers a full system design in which the controller, drives, motors, and connectivity are customized for a machine’s unique specifications.

• C6 Smart Automation Controller – As the central coordinator of the entire machine, this controller handles PROFINET communication, machine control, HMI, and motion control with cyclical positioning.

• COMBIVERT S6 Servo Drives – These book-like servo drives are designed for side-by-side mounting to maximize cabinet space. They deliver the high dynamic performance necessary for precise, high-speed motion axes.

• KEB Servo Motors – Engineered for seamless integration with S6 drives, these motors ensure accurate torque delivery and consistent positioning repeatability even at full production speeds.

• C6 Router for Remote Maintenance – Enables secure remote access for diagnostics and support. It is a critical component for maintaining machines deployed at customer sites worldwide.

Merz systems are engineered for versatility, adapting easily to different packaging needs. Most machine builds feature a core architecture of servo drives, matching motors, and an automation controller to maintain high precision across various applications.

“We put our packaging and dosing machines into operation in numerous industries all over the world. This also means that the requirements placed on our machines sometimes differ significantly. It is then a great advantage for us that we can fall back on customised drive solutions first from KEB,” says Volker Hedrich, Head of Electrical at Merz.

KEB at the Center of the System

One notable machine in the Merz lineup is the SB18-2T snus packaging machine, a fully automatic vertical form-fill-seal (VFFS) system engineered for high-efficiency production of small tubular bags, commonly known as stick packs.

Processing a wide range of materials from flat film reels, it follows a precise sequence: unwinding the film, forming it into a tube, creating a longitudinal seal, dosing the product, applying transverse seals, and cutting individual stick packs to length. Two lanes are integrated within a single compact housing, maximizing throughput while keeping the machine footprint small.

At up to 900 sachets per minute, that throughput places strict demands on the drive system. “The SB18-2T operates fully automatically and processes types of fleece from the flat film roll. Since it has an output of up to 900 sachets per minute, we need a system solution in which individual components are matched to each other and work smoothly. In the machine, we therefore rely not only on the C6 Smart control system but also on the S6 servo drives, servo motors and the C6 routers from KEB Automation,” says Tobias Merte, head of PLC programming at Merz.

The second featured machine is the SBL50-2, a VFFS machine built specifically for stick pack production and tailored for high-precision applications in pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and food.

The process begins as flat film is pulled from a reel and wrapped around a forming collar to create a continuous vertical tube. A vertical sealing bar joins the film edges to form the back seam, while horizontal jaws seal the bottom to create a pouch. A precision dosing system then drops the exact amount of product, whether powder, liquid, or granules, into the open tube. The horizontal jaws complete the top seal, a knife cuts the finished stick pack away, and the cycle immediately repeats.

On the SBL50-2, the KEB controller takes on a central role across multiple functions. “The C6 Smart handles communication via Profinet and enables machine control and operation. Above all, however, our C6 controller is responsible for motion control and cyclical positioning in Merz packaging machines. For example, in the SBL50-2 stick pack machine,” says Artur Albring, sales engineer at KEB.

Beyond the performance of KEB’s drives and motors themselves, one important requirement from Merz was a compact and clean cabinet control space. This ensures multiple drive controllers to operate efficiently in a limited space while still delivering quality.

Designed for Packaging Demands

This case study isn’t just about hardware; it’s about a 20-year partnership. The Merz machines demonstrate the power of treating drive architecture as a fundamental design input rather than a secondary consideration.

By integrating KEB controllers, servo drives, motors, and remote access hardware as a unified ecosystem from the initial blueprint, Merz engineers achieve a remarkable output of sachets per minute and maintain consistent reliability for customers worldwide.

For more information on KEB’s automation solutions and their application in Merz’s machines, visit Merz packaging machines uses drive systems from KEB | KEB Automation KG.