A continuous, multiline packaging apparatus for continuously conveying, turning, and loading non-round bottles includes infeed conveyors which convey non-round bottles to timing screw conveyors. The timing conveyors are operable to space the bottles a predetermined distance apart and to feed the lines of spaced bottles to turning conveyors. The turning conveyors are each comprised of high and low speed conveyor chains, and guide rails. The turning conveyors first turn the bottles to an intermediate angled position and thereafter further turn the bottles to a loading position. A grouping conveyor comprising a plurality of fights cooperates with the turning conveyors to cause the bottles to form groups which are transferred to a loading device. The loading device continuously shifts the grouped bottles laterally into cartons as the bottles are continuously moved in a downstream direction.

Apparatus is provided for receiving folded cartons of non-uniform thickness from a conventional gluing device, stacking those cartons into stacks of a predefined number, and rotating successive stacks 180.degree. from each other in order to compensate for the uneven or non-uniform thickness of each folded carton. The apparatus further serves to drop two or more stacks of the folded cartons from a stack building station into a slug building area and then, once a slug of a desired size is built, tilting the slug until the plane of each folded carton is vertically oriented (i.e., the slug lies horizontally). The apparatus then automatically loads the slug into a shipping box.