Supplier pallet in, customer order out — fully wrapped and ready for the dock, without a single human touch.

“Stretch wrapping was the last manual step standing between us and lights-out automation. With Lantech’s SL400AMR in the loop, the Pallet Factory delivers on its original promise. Pallet in, pallet out, fully unattended. A beverage distributor can receive a supplier pallet, build every customer order, and send it to the dock wrapped and ready without a single human touch.”

— Jonathan O’Neil, founder, Block One Automation

At a Glance

  • Customer: Del Papa Distributing — Texas City, Texas (serving 17 counties along the Texas Gulf Coast)
  • Industry: Wholesale beverage distribution (beer, wine, water, energy drinks, coffee)
  • Integration partner: Block One Automation — robotics integrator specializing in automated pallet-building for wholesale beverage distribution
  • Technology: Block One’s Pallet Factory™ (robotic arms, AMRs, dense case storage, and a Warehouse Execution System) + Lantech’s SL400AMR Stretch Wrapper
  • What’s new: the SL400AMR closes the automation loop — extending unattended operation from the palletizer all the way to the dock door for the first time at this site

Who Is Del Papa Distributing

Del Papa Distributing has been a family-owned beverage wholesaler on the Texas Gulf Coast since 1910, when Italian immigrant Omero Del Papa opened a grocery store in Galveston that grew into a full-line beverage distributorship. Today, Del Papa distributes more than 500 brands — beer, wine, water, energy drinks and coffee — from over 20 suppliers to retailers across 17 Texas counties, and remains led by the Del Papa family.

Like most beverage distributors, Del Papa competes in a business built on thin margins, high SKU counts, and mixed-case orders that vary pallet by pallet — a very different challenge than a single-product manufacturing line.

The Challenge: Automation That Stopped Short of the Dock

Del Papa’s warehouse operation faces the same pressures reshaping distribution nationwide:

  • A shrinking pool of available warehouse labor, particularly for overnight shifts
  • Real safety exposure on the floor — a loaded pallet and forklift together can weigh four to five tons, moving through the same aisles as people on foot
  • A need to run continuously, since automated systems can work around the clock even though they move at a different pace than a forklift operator
  • Margin pressure across the beverage category, which puts a premium on efficiency gains that don’t require adding headcount

Del Papa had already addressed much of this. In late 2025, working with Block One Automation, Del Papa brought its Pallet Factory™ online, running a fully unmanned overnight shift that sorts, picks, and palletizes customer orders using robotic arms, AMRs, and dense case storage under a single Warehouse Execution System.

But that automation had a hard stop: the finished, palletized order still had to be stretch-wrapped by hand before it could go to the dock. For a system built around “lights-out” operation, one manual station in the middle of the flow was the difference between mostly automated and fully automated.

“Automation for us has never been about simply replacing people with machines. It’s about removing repetitive work, reducing safety exposure, eliminating aging equipment that requires constant maintenance, and building a more reliable operation. Our existing stretch wrappers had served us for many years, but they had become a maintenance burden and were still a manual dependency in an increasingly automated process. Integrating Lantech’s SL400AMR with the Block One solution allows us to modernize that piece of the operation while extending automation further toward the dock. The real value is having a process we can depend on…product comes out built, wrapped, and ready for the next step without someone having to constantly manage it.”

— Steve Holtsclaw, VP Technology Solutions & Integration, Del Papa Distributing

The Solution: A Fully Closed Automation Loop

Block One’s Pallet Factory™ handles everything from the moment a supplier pallet arrives to the moment a customer order is built: robotic arms manage high-volume SKUs, dense case storage (ACR) handles the long tail of lower-volume products, and AMRs move product throughout the facility — all coordinated by Block One’s Warehouse Execution System (WES).

In this deployment, once an AMR completes a customer order pallet, it delivers that pallet directly to one of three Lantech SL400AMR Stretch Wrappers — no conveyors, ramps, or fixed infrastructure required. The SL400AMR completes the wrap cycle without operator involvement, then signals the AMR system that the load is ready for pickup and delivery to the dock.

A few of the specific design details that make this handoff reliable in an unattended environment include:

  • TurboTak™ technology uses two stages of high-velocity air blasts to shape and secure the film tail, eliminating the loose film that could otherwise trip an AMR’s sensors and halt the line
  • Load Seeking Clamp® locates the load and manages the film tail without an operator present
  • The wrapper’s cycle time is consistent and predictable — a requirement for the WES to schedule AMR traffic without building in slack for manual intervention

This kind of setup is best suited to environments with real pallet-to-pallet variation — mixed-case, high-SKU operations like beverage distribution — rather than single-product manufacturing lines where every pallet looks the same.

Results

For the first time at this facility, a pallet can move from the moment a supplier delivery is received to a fully wrapped, dock-ready customer order without a person touching it in between.

Interested in learning more? Request a consultation from our team here. 

What’s Next

Both Lantech (Booth 716) and Block One (Booth 717) will be present at NBWA’s 89th Annual Convention & Product Showcase Oct. 11-14, 2026 in Orlando, Florida. The SL400AMR will also be on display in Lantech’s booth (N-5506) at Pack Expo International Oct. 18-21, 2026 in Chicago, Illinois.

About Lantech

In 1972, Lantech invented the stretch wrapper and changed the way companies package and protect products for shipment. Today, billions of pallet loads are stretch wrapped every year using Lantech technology. Lantech builds a full line of case and tray handling, stretch wrapping, and pallet conveying equipment, with manufacturing facilities in the United States and the Netherlands and sales and technical support worldwide. www.lantech.com

About Block One Automation

Block One is a robotics integrator specializing in automated pallet-building for wholesale beverage distribution. Its Pallet Factory™ system combines robotic arms, autonomous mobile robots, and dense case storage under a single Warehouse Execution System to automate mixed-case palletization — fully unattended, from supplier pallet in to customer order out. Block One serves the roughly 5,600 wholesale beverage distributors across North America who supply the products consumers expect on retail shelves. www.blockone.com

About Del Papa Distributing

Founded in 1910, Del Papa Distributing is a fourth-generation, family-owned beverage distributor proudly serving communities across the Texas Gulf Coast. For more than a century, Del Papa has built its business on quality people, strong partnerships and a commitment to building great brands one case and one customer at a time. With operations in Beaumont, Texas City and Victoria, Del Papa serves 17 counties throughout Southeast and South Texas. Guided by its promise, “We Deliver,” Del Papa remains committed to its customers, brand partners, employees and the communities it proudly serves. www.delpapadistributing.com

Media Contacts

Lantech: Alex Seibert ([email protected])

Block One Automation: Travis Lee ([email protected])