What are the most popular PLC's used on the packing industry?

packaging industry PLC's, most notably cosmetic and pharamaceutical packaging machinery..

I've never worked in the cosmetic or pharm industry, but I've been in food & bev, pulp & paper, & automotive. By far AB is what was used in most of those categories. Sure, you will see Direct logic, Siemans, Omron, & other, but usually are in lesser percentage.

I personally believe AB has gained market share in the pack industry with the integration of Control Logix motion. Maybe in need to get out more, but to me nobody is doing that as well as AB.

squale said:

packaging industry PLC's, most notably cosmetic and pharamaceutical packaging machinery..

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Pharma & Cosmetics mostly Siemens (since most machines are build in Europe: France, Italy, Germany).
You can get AB for a premium.
Also, you'll find machines that utilize servo controllers and proprietary hardware (HMI, etc)and not a PLC. Don't be surprised to see a lot of these beasts out there.
Klockner is big in both industries, Pharma and Cosmetics, primarily thermoforming and cold forming machinery (see filling and sealing).
Most of their set ups I've seen were written for Siemens but customers requested an AB and you can tell by the way logic and routines are structured that is a pretty generic program tailored to work with AB hardware.
You'll also find that code exists for all/most options the system will work with even if you don't have all installed on your machine.
Kalix, Rovema, Vetraco some other names. I'm sure I missed a lot.
Hope this helps.

Generally all Europeon OEM's offers Siemens PLC and American OEM's offer AB PLC, As bkottaras rightly said if you AB PLC from Europeon OEM or Siemens PLC from American OEM you got pay a premium.
Also I have seen proprietary PLC 's from Europeon OEM for packaging machinery.

In the few food and beverage places I have been, 3 to be exact, the main PLC's I have seen in use are B&R and Eberle. Most if not all the machines I seen in these places were built in Germany.

In the paper industry I have seen Siemens and Mitsubishi. Of these the Siemens machines were built in EU and the Mitsubishi was here in the US.

And in the pharm industry as mentioned it seems predominatly AB.

wow so many different choices out there.. is it very hard and time consuming to learn all these different plcs... siemens, AB, etc..? I don't have any machines infront of me to practice on, so is it going to be pretty much an impossible task to learn this stuff properly?

my packaging plant is approximately 30% AB 40% seimens (oem equipment from Holland), 20% omron (Quebec head office supplied equipment)and 10% other approximately mostly GE Fanucs, mitshibushi fx series

Squale :
Thats true there are plenty of them in the market,
As far I did 5 years ago was STANDARDIZATION.
I standardized DCS , PLC's , Drives,recorders,FieldBus and Field and analytical instruments.
To do that make a survey of all installation , including MTBF's , and local support of the vendor and so on.
and more to that Standardize on Technology,wher you are not vendor dependent.
Then things are easy on the longer run.