•  Since its inception in 1944 General Methods has been a "low key" company and one of Central Illinois best kept secrets.  General Methods (GEMCO) has gone through many changes over the years adapting to changing technologies.  

• General Methods is a perfect example of a company that believes in "finding a need or a niche and filling it".   GEMCO has merged a wealth of experience and skill into a company that would earn its remarkable reputation for producing leading quality control test equipment for the packaging industry.  

• GEMCO management operates the business with a quality foundation of unwavering ethics and quality workmanship 

•  GEMCO was originally a metal machine shop established in 1944, as a subsidiary of Fleming-Potter.  Fleming-Potter was a printing company that was created after prohibition to supply labels to Hiram Walker & Sons and other Peoria area distillers since Peoria, IL was a hotbed for distillers.  This was due to the abundance of grain, the excellence of transportation facilities, (trains, trucks, and barges) and  because of the pure artesian well water that maintained a 50  +/- 1 degree temperature year round.

• General Methods original name was General Metals. The World War II war effort cut off all aluminum foil supplies, (much of the printing companies labels were made of aluminum).   

• General Metals was formed to create a machine that would manufacture lead capsules, or secondary closures, for the bottle necks of whiskey, wine, and champagne bottles.  General Metals became a tool and die/machine company whose primary customer was Caterpillar, Inc.  General Metals soon became General Methods/IBM or GEMCO/IBM.  IBM was International Banding Machines whose machines are placed within the tobacco industry.  

• GEMCO continues to provide parts to IBM's 1930 and 40's style machines now located in other countries, and maintains original blueprints of these machines.
  

GEMCO concentrated in the 1960's specializing in the design and manufacture of machines and delivery systems for both two and three dimension products  to solve special requirements in the material handling, orientating, sequencing, transportation and delivery confirmation of products.   These machines placed over 7 million Olympic coins into General Mills Boxes and millions of  coupons, toys,  and candy into cereal boxes.  Even machines to cut, dispense, but also check each box for insertion was designed. 

GEMCO's high speed coupon dispensing equipment placed these 'sales aids' in containers such as cereals, flour, canned and bottled and dry foods, and many personal car products you used every day.  This technology was designed  to replace labor intensive manual systems within efficient mechanical systems with systems that focused on the required tasks and electronics to control, track, sort and verify. 

Our design experiences ranged from one of a  kind to production quantity delivery systems that have met customer design specifications of run rates up to 200/minute and design lives up to hundreds of millions of cycles.

More examples of some of the machines and systems designed to meet special products delivery requirements include:

• Tax stamps cut and affixed to cigarette packages
•  Two dimensional coupons inserted into product packages (including automated folding of the coupons to specified size).
•  Three dimensional items inserted in product packages
• Egg dropper machines that dropped multi colored and multi size quantities (i.e. half dozen, dozen, two dozen) into packages
• Mixed packages sequencing and packaging into one box (i.e. cake mix and frosting, macaroni and cheese)
•  Flap detect and removal if box not properly closed