INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
- Labor shortages and safety concerns are accelerating automation adoption in pet food packaging, with AGVs and AMRs increasingly working in tandem with stretch wrappers to eliminate manual handling
- Plastic reduction is a top priority, driven by both corporate sustainability goals and tightening government regulations on single-use materials
- Lantech is tracking materials and plastics regulations globally to engineer machines that can deliver the same packaging performance with less material
- The next challenge: as packaging gets leaner, maintaining product integrity during transport becomes harder — requiring stronger solutions with fewer inputs
Interview with Jon Lavine, national account manager, Lantech
Petfood Forum Chat: This is a special report from Petfood Forum 2026. I'm Jackie Roembke, editor-in-chief of WATT Global Media's Feed Brands, and I'm the guest host of Petfood Forum Chat. I sat down with industry leaders and innovators to get their take on the trends shaping the global pet food industry — from ingredients and processing to sustainability and the future of pet nutrition. Take a minute to listen in on those conversations.
Jon Lavine, national sales manager, Lantech: I am Jon Lavine. I work for Lantech. We are a packaging machinery manufacturer based in Louisville, Kentucky. I have about 25 years of packaging machinery experience in a variety of roles spanning marketing and sales. I currently cover national accounts for Lantech. We're here at Petfood Forum showing our packaging machinery and some of our automation solutions.
Petfood Forum Chat: What do you think are the most important industry trends at the moment?
Lavine: We've seen a few trends lately. The first is automation. We're seeing labor shortages — people unable to work long hours or fill open positions — and more companies are looking toward automation as a result. Machines don't get sick. They don't call out. That's where Lantech comes in with solutions to help address those issues.
The other major trend is a reduction in packaging materials. Plastic reduction is a priority for a lot of companies right now. They want to go greener — reducing materials, reducing packaging and reducing what's used to ship their products. We're working to help with both: automating operations and making packaging sturdier so products can ship with fewer materials.
Petfood Forum Chat: Are your customers concerned about supply chain issues on the packaging side — whether geopolitical or otherwise?
Lavine: Definitely, especially when it comes to plastics. It's not just geopolitical — it's also regulations from governments that are taxing plastic use, requiring recycled content or mandating that materials not be single-use. All of that affects everything we use to move products from point A to point B in as-made condition. So we have to find better ways to reuse plastics, reduce plastics or shift to more recyclable and reusable alternatives.
Petfood Forum Chat: You mentioned automation and labor concerns. Are those evergreen issues in the pet food industry, or are there other factors making workforce a challenge?
Lavine: It's very prevalent in pet food. There are some large companies that are serious about employee safety — making sure workers aren't hand-wrapping pallets, bending over, or lifting heavy bagged product repeatedly. They're increasingly aware that those repetitive actions cause injuries.
So we're working to automate — particularly in pet food, but across industries — to reduce repetitive strain and help employees move product more easily, safely and efficiently. And beyond safety, there's the straightforward need to move faster and more cost-effectively, which also drives labor reduction.
Petfood Forum Chat: Tell us about some of the interesting innovations you've seen here at Petfood Forum.
Lavine: We've seen a lot of interesting technologies on the packaging side. There's a strong push toward AGVs and AMRs — automated guided vehicles and autonomous mobile robots — that move product from point A to point B inside a warehouse, including moving pallets through the facility.
We're integrating with AGVs and AMRs more and more. They can bring pallets to the stretch wrapper, communicate with it to trigger a wrap cycle, then receive a signal when wrapping is complete and move on to the next pallet — all without human intervention. It's a significant reduction in manual labor for those operations.
Petfood Forum Chat: How does Lantech's equipment and recent innovations align with these key trends?
Lavine: We're keeping a close eye on all of it. It's not just about automating machinery — we attend materials and plastics conferences to understand what other companies are doing and where regulations are heading across countries and industries. We're learning how to package products more efficiently with our machinery, and how to engineer our machines to reduce the amount of plastic required to do the same job. We're also continuing to push on automation — making things easier, faster and less material-intensive overall.
Petfood Forum Chat: Looking ahead, what issues do you think will take center stage in the next five to 10 years?
Lavine: We expect to see continued labor reduction and more automation, along with less plastic and less packaging material overall. One emerging challenge: as packaging materials are reduced, we're starting to see transportation issues — products getting damaged or shifting during transit. So we'll have to find ways to make packaging stronger while still using significantly less material than we do today. There are real challenges ahead, and we're ready to work through them.
Petfood Forum Chat: The 2026 edition of Petfood Forum was held April 26–28 in Kansas City, Missouri. For more Petfood Forum news and in-depth event coverage, please visit petfoodindustry.com.
