Plant and process for handling cardboard reels

A process for handling cardboard reels for feeding tube-forming machines, comprising a step of positioning a plurality of superimposed cardboard reels in a reel pick-up station, providing an unwinding station (U) for unwinding the reels, the unwinding station comprising at least one unwinding unit adapted for supporting the reels to be unwound in an unwinding position, splice means being also provided in the unwinding station configured to splice a tail portion of a reel in the run-out phase with a new reel to continuously unwind the reels progressively arranged in the unwinding station, and providing handling means for moving the reels along a predetermined path between the reel pick-up station and the unwinding station, wherein the at least one unwinding unit comprises a plurality of supports mounted on a carousel structure with a vertical axis that is controlled and moved by control means for cyclically arranging said supports in correspondence with a plurality of operating positions, the plurality of operating positions including a predetermined reel loading position for loading the reels on the supports and a different predetermined reel exhaustion position of exhaustion of the reels, the reel pick-up station being configured to receive a stack of superimposed cardboard reels, the handling means being configured and controlled for picking up one reel at a time from the stack and moving this reel from the pick-up station to a support of the at least one unwinding unit arranged in the loading position.