Duravant Finalizes Acquisition of Pattyn Group, Strengthening Global Packaging Automation Capabilities
Duravant LLC (“Duravant”), a leading global provider of engineered equipment and automation solutions across the food processing, packaging, and material handling industries, has officially completed its acquisition of Pattyn Group BV (“Pattyn”), a Belgian-based manufacturer specializing in high-performance packaging automation systems. The acquisition, first announced on February 7, 2025, was finalized today.
Headquartered in Bruges, Belgium, Pattyn brings more than seven decades of experience in developing sophisticated packaging solutions, with a particular focus on bag-in-box systems. The company has built a global reputation as a trusted automation partner for customers in diverse sectors, including food and ingredients, bakery, industrial goods, and other non-food applications.
A Strategic Union to Expand Global Reach and Capabilities
Mike Kachmer, Chairman and CEO of Duravant, emphasized the strategic importance of the acquisition, stating, “We are extremely excited to welcome Pattyn to the Duravant family. Pattyn’s robust portfolio of high-quality packaging technologies and their steadfast focus on delivering value-driven solutions align perfectly with Duravant’s commitment to customer success. This partnership opens up incredible opportunities for collaboration with our Operating Companies across Duravant, enhancing our ability to serve a global customer base with innovative and reliable automation solutions.”
Duravant has long established itself as a leader in packaging, material handling, and food processing automation. The acquisition of Pattyn adds a complementary layer of capabilities to Duravant’s platform, particularly in fully automated end-of-line packaging for bulk products. It also significantly enhances Duravant’s footprint in Europe and other international markets, aligning with its broader mission to deliver localized solutions backed by global support infrastructure.
Pattyn: A Packaging Automation Pioneer
Founded more than 70 years ago, Pattyn has developed a unique niche in bag-in-box technologies, offering a wide range of automated systems that span the entire packaging line—from case erecting and bag inserting to weigh filling, bag sealing, case closing, and palletizing.
Pattyn’s modular systems are renowned for their precision, speed, and customization potential. The company designs solutions tailored to customer-specific requirements, helping businesses around the world automate labor-intensive packaging tasks while ensuring quality, hygiene, and traceability.
Operating from six specialized manufacturing facilities across Belgium, France, and Spain, Pattyn also maintains sales and service subsidiaries in North America and Asia, ensuring responsive support and continuous customer engagement on a global scale. Their end-to-end approach to service includes not only installation and maintenance but also lifetime support for both equipment and consumables.
Leadership Perspective and Shared Vision
Stan Pattyn, who continues to lead the company, expressed enthusiasm for the next chapter in Pattyn’s growth journey. “Pattyn shares Duravant’s culture and customer-focused mindset, and we see tremendous opportunity to advance our strategic priorities at unprecedented speed,” he said. “Duravant’s global reach and foothold in fast-growing end markets such as protein processing creates a powerful platform for further expansion and innovation. We’re also excited to leverage the investments Duravant is making in emerging markets such as Brazil, Mexico, Thailand, China and India to better support customers in those regions.”
The alignment between the two companies is based on a shared commitment to engineering excellence, customer service, and continuous innovation. With a combined focus on smart, sustainable, and scalable solutions, Duravant and Pattyn aim to meet the rapidly evolving needs of customers seeking greater automation, efficiency, and compliance with global food safety and industrial standards.
Industry-Leading Product Portfolio
Pattyn’s technology portfolio is a key asset in this acquisition. The company’s expertise in bag-in-box systems includes both bagmaker-inserters that produce custom-sized bags on demand and compact solutions for pre-made bags on a reel. These systems ensure optimal bag fit and minimize material waste—critical factors in food safety and operational cost reduction.
In addition to its bag-in-box capabilities, Pattyn offers advanced weigh filling technologies designed for precise, fixed-weight packaging of semi-liquids, solids, butter, tobacco, and other bulk materials. Their proprietary software platforms help customers ensure consistent product weights, improving process control and compliance.
Pattyn’s Bakery Division delivers specialized solutions for bread, pastries, and frozen dough, integrating vision-guided robotic pick-and-place systems that enable high-speed, high-accuracy counting and handling. These systems meet the stringent hygiene and throughput demands of industrial bakeries operating at scale.
Another area of specialization for Pattyn lies in large-scale bag-in-box lines for bulk packaging in octabins and large bags. These are particularly important for customers in the petrochemical and industrial food production sectors, where volume and reliability are essential.
Innovation and the Future
Mike Kachmer noted that Pattyn’s track record of innovation will play a key role in shaping Duravant’s future product development strategy. “As customers around the world strive for smarter, safer, and more efficient production, Pattyn continues to lead the way with packaging systems that meet the demands of today and the challenges of tomorrow,” said Kachmer. “Their ability to innovate and adapt has been at the core of their success.”
This acquisition not only enhances Duravant’s technical capabilities and market coverage but also reinforces its long-term commitment to advancing packaging automation technologies. As Duravant integrates Pattyn into its growing portfolio of Operating Companies, the focus will be on leveraging shared expertise, expanding market access, and accelerating the development of next-generation automation systems.
A Stronger Platform for Global Growth
Together, Duravant and Pattyn are positioned to offer a stronger value proposition to customers around the world—combining engineering excellence, local support, and comprehensive automation capabilities. This strategic acquisition represents a significant step forward in Duravant’s mission to deliver high-performance solutions that drive operational excellence, enhance food safety, and support the evolving needs of modern manufacturing.
About Duravant
Headquartered in Downers Grove, IL, Duravant is a global engineered equipment company with manufacturing, sales, and service facilities throughout North America, South America, Europe, and Asia. Through their portfolio of operating companies, Duravant delivers trusted end-to-end automation solutions for customers and partners through engineering and integration expertise, project management, and operational excellence. With worldwide sales distribution and support through the Duravant Lifecycle Services network, they provide immediate and lifetime aftermarket support to all the markets they serve in the protein processing, food sorting and handling, packaging, and material handling sectors. Duravant’s market-leading brands are synonymous with innovation, durability, and reliability. For more information, visit www.duravant.com
About Pattyn
Headquartered in Bruges, Belgium, Pattyn Group is a manufacturer and service provider of innovative and highly engineered packaging automation equipment specializing in modular solutions for counting, weighing, filling, and bag-in-a-box applications. Since 1952, the company serves the B2B packaging segment and a diverse customer base that includes food and non-food producers in over 80 countries worldwide.
Committed to fostering lifetime partnerships, Pattyn designs and delivers turnkey packaging lines with innovative modular designs that deliver custom solutions. The company provides aftermarket support with consumables, parts, and comprehensive service programs. With six manufacturing sites in Belgium, France, and Spain, and sales and service hubs in the United States and Asia, Pattyn partners with their customers to improve the efficiency, performance, and quality of their industrial packaging needs. For more information, visit www.pattyn.com
