Plural line bag forming and filling apparatus

In a packaging apparatus, a combination comprising a pair of packaging machines arranged side-by-side and each including a tube station in which a web of packaging material is withdrawn from a supply roll and shaped into a tube, a bag-forming station in which the tube is subdivided into tube sections which are converted into bags, a filling station in which a product is filled into the bags, a sealing station in which the filled bags are sealed, and a delivery station, said stations in respective machines being arranged sequentially;

• a conveyor extending along all of said stations and having two side-by-side pairs of conveyor tracks;
• means for delivering bags from each of said bag-forming stations alternately to the respective tracks of an associated one of said pairs of tracks, said means comprising two intermediate magazines, one in each of said machines, displaceable in timed movements transversely of the conveyor elongation, each magazine receiving bags individually from the respective bag-forming station and alternately displacing the formed bags towards the respective conveyor track;
• means for transferring bags at the respective bag-forming station to a respective one of said intermediate magazines;
• and means for transferring bags from the intermediate magazines to the respective conveyor track.