Bigger Means Better — ESS Expands

30 years!!! 

It’s the rare small business that survives thirty years, never mind experiencing explosive growth three decades in. ESS is celebrating this achievement; bigger means better!

Now a member of the Pacteon Group, ESS has cut the ribbon on our latest manufacturing expansion located at Cascade Industrial Park in Pembroke, Virginia. The original building was 10,000 square feet. The expansion adds 12,000 square feet, more than doubling the total engineering and manufacturing space to 22,000 square feet. Located thirty minutes from ESS headquarters in Blacksburg, Virginia, the expanded ESS facility brings increased capacity to ESS’s production capabilities and more skilled jobs to the local area. ESS is hiring excellent people for both locations. 

VP and GM Tim Cokeley and ESS Team Members Cut the Ribbon on the Pembroke Virginia Building Expansion (Photo courtesy of the Virginia Leader.)

ESS manufactures cartoners, case packers and robotic pallet cells for a range of products, including pharmaceuticals, diagnostics, medical devices, cosmetics and consumer packaged goods. Our TaskMate Robotic Systems® integrate with our end-of-line solutions to create a fully automated packaging line. System design capabilities range from compact cartoners to baseball infield-length full packaging lines that may be integrated with equipment manufactured by the Pacteon Group companies and other OEMs. The expansion to ESS’s manufacturing capacity allows ESS to meet our customer’s expectations for building their systems while maintaining flexibility to configure our shop floor space to maximize production.

  

A Very Compact Cartoner and a Very Large Cartoning and Case Packing Line
(Photos by ESS Technologies, Inc.)

The added space also allows ESS to expand its skilled engineering team. Innovation doesn’t sit still, and neither does ESS. Our engineers are dedicated to developing reliable, cost-effective, state-of-the-art technology to enhance our end-of-line packaging solutions. Bigger space means room for bigger ideas!

Integrated FANUC Robots are Featured in ESS Packaging Machines 
(Photo courtesy of the Virginia Leader.)

For example, ESS engineers designed a unique fixture to automate erecting a variety of cartons on a single system, including auto-bottom cartons, glue-bottom cartons, and tuck-bottom cartons. An Authorized System Integrator for FANUC America robots, ESS integrates FANUC’s SR-6iA robot to square the carton sides, move the carton across the bottom closing fixture, and place it on a conveyor for downstream loading and closing. ESS designed the robot tooling with quick-change connections for fast changeover.

ESS’s Carton Erecting Design for the VC30 Carton Erector, Loader and Closer Has Been Submitted for Patent Approval (Photo by ESS Technologies, Inc.)

ESS celebrated our expansion with a ceremony at the Pembroke, Virginia location. The event included county and state representatives, elected officials, local businesses, ESS leadership, and ESS personnel. Visitors toured the facility, learned about ESS end-of-line solutions, and viewed some of our automated packaging machines being built at the Pembroke, Virginia location. The Virginia Leader news article about this event can be viewed on page 2 of the January 25, 2023 edition available at www.virgnialeader.com. 

Visitors to the ESS Ribbon Cutting Ceremony Learn More About ESS’s Robotic Mini Pallet Cell
(Photo courtesy of the Virginia Leader.)

ESS is excited to see how much bigger we will grow in the next thirty years. With the strength of Pacteon Group, which currently includes ESS, Schneider Packaging Equipment (Brewerton, New York, USA) and Phoenix Stretch Wrappers (Laval, Quebec, Canada), ESS makes the Pacteon Promise: We make it right. Learn more about ESS at our website, www.esstechnologies.com.

(This article is linked and excerpted with permission from the Virginia Leader. All ESS photos are copyright of ESS Technologies, Inc.)