Our Founder, Mr. John R. Nalbach, a Mechanical Engineering graduate from the University of Wisconsin, was a “Consulting Engineer” during the Second World War. In May of 1945 Mr. Nalbach was commissioned to design and build a high speed filling machine to fill Cameo Cleanser, an abrasive scouring powder. Because of the success of the machine design, later units were built for Cudahy Packing Co., Procter & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive, Boyle-Midway, Drackett and Unilever.
Initially, Nalbach Engineering was located in the Chicago “Loop”. In 1954 the company purchased its first manufacturing facility in Cicero, Illinois. From its original size of 4000 square feet (370 square meters) Nalbach expanded this facility to 23,000 square feet (2,137 square meters).
Early in 1996 the company moved into a much larger facility in Countryside, Illinois, a modern building of 50,000 square feet (4,645 square meters).
An important turning point for Nalbach Engineering occurred in 1962 when the company manufactured the first filler to handle powdered/granulated food products for Nestle’s Nestea product line. Since that time, Nalbach has seen continued growth, especially in the international market. As customers’ needs have evolved, Nalbach has responded with custom engineered solutions, thus increasing its equipment offering.
In addition to seven styles of high-speed powder fillers, Nalbach Engineering has manufactured aerosol filling equipment since 1952, specialty packaging intermittent motion indexing packaging lines since 1974, and cannery filling machines since 1976.
In 1971 a complete line of plastic bottle unscramblers was designed by John C. Nalbach. In 1981 a line of cartridge unscramblers was added for unscrambling fiber or plastic tubes for caulking compounds, lubricants, etc.
In 2001, the company released a complete line of auger filling and cup filling machines. These units augment the company’s high-speed powder/granular filling machines and allows us to apply our 50+ years of powder filling experience to low speed applications.
In 2003, the Nalbach Rotary Auger filler was released. Featuring the company’s servo driven auger fillers and time tested gear driven rotary base and product settling systems.
In 2005, the NECOSORT-III high speed plastic bottle unscrambler was launched. This unique, new generation, bottle unscrambler reduces maintenance & downtime and has the smallest footprint in the industry.
In 2007, Nalbach added an additional 20,000 square feet of manufacturing space to its Countryside, IL plant.
In 2012, Nalbach launched a line of bottle orienter products, the NECO-ORIENTER. The NECO-ORIENTER is available as a stand-alone system or fully integrated with the bottle unscrambler line of products.
Nalbach Engineering also provides system integration services for complete “turnkey” packaging lines. These services include the design specification, purchase, set-up and testing of entire packaging lines such as the instant coffee filling line for Kraft China which you will see in our “turnkey” engineering page.
Nalbach has been a member of the PMMI since 1958.
About The Nalbach Group
Nalbach Engineering is a part of The Nalbach Group, a diverse conglomerate of companies offering specialized products and quality services to provide one stop shop solutions for custom automation machinery and fabricated components.