17th International Logistics Total Expo 2026 (LTT2026) exhibitor series, Part 15
A conveyor stops. Whether the cause is one belt, the motor inside a roller, or a single power supply unit is not known until it is found. In the meantime, goods move by hand.
This time the exhibits replace those components. But something remains after the replacement: what the component touches.
Components and drive exhibits at LTT2026 — four substitutions
| What is replaced | What the site stops doing | Axis of the exhibits |
|---|---|---|
| ① Turning and reducing | Fitting work to an off-the-shelf conveyor | Motors, reducers, drive units |
| ② Transmitting and carrying | Correcting belt drift by hand | Conveyor belts, drive belts, rollers |
| ③ Pushing, lifting, supporting | Lifting and pushing by human force | Electric cylinders, mechanical parts |
| ④ Passing power and radio waves | Re-running cable, stopping to charge | Power supplies, wireless charging, industrial networks |
① Turning and reducing — motors and reducers, and drive units that combine the two. There were motors housed inside the roller itself, units for robot joints, and servo motors offered together with their drives. The words placed in front were "stopping accuracy", "low noise", "long life" and "maintenance-free". Several exhibits addressed head-on the demand to build an automated guided vehicle in-house, matched to one's own site.
② Transmitting and carrying — belts and rollers. Conveying belts, drive belts, belts for curves, and sleeves that prevent drift. And the tools for joining belts and the maintenance supplies as well. Because these are consumables replaced year after year, this area turns into a procurement discussion more readily than a performance one.
③ Pushing, lifting, supporting — electric cylinders, single-axis robots, lifting axes, and mechanical parts. Lifting axes retrofitted to collaborative robots; castors for heavy loads. Some exhibits started from the premise that hand carts remain even as automated equipment increases.
④ Passing power and radio waves — power and communication. Power supplies for control panels, supplies rated for dust and water, and contactless charging. There were even proposals for charging while in motion. Other exhibits built their case on wireless stability and on redundancy that keeps things running when communication drops.
What the four have in common
None of the four is a finished product. Each works only once it is inside another machine. So the centre of the explanation is not "what it can do" but "where it can be built in".
What decreases is downtime, and the occasions on which a person has to apply force. What does not decrease is what that machine is carrying. And depending on what is being carried, the legal status of the same component changes.
A component in direct contact with food is not a component but an "apparatus"
Article 4, paragraph 4 of the Food Sanitation Act defines apparatus as "tableware, cooking implements and other machines, implements or other articles used for the collection, manufacture, processing, cooking, storage, transport, display, transfer or ingestion of food or additives, and which come into direct contact with food or additives".
A machine used for transport that comes into direct contact with food — a conveying belt or a roller can fall here. On the parts list it is a component; from the moment it touches food, the law treats it as an apparatus.
Once that happens, Article 18, paragraph 2 applies. Where standards have been set, it provides that "no apparatus or container-package that fails to conform to those standards shall be sold, manufactured for the purpose of sale, imported, or used in business, nor shall raw materials that fail to conform to those standards be used, nor shall apparatus or container-packages be manufactured by a method that fails to meet those criteria". The prohibition is not aimed only at the seller. Using it in business stands in the same sentence.
There is also a provision on the material itself. Article 18, paragraph 3 states that where, for raw materials of a material specified by Cabinet Order, the permitted quantity of content or migration "is not set in the standards under paragraph 1, it shall not be used". Article 16 provides that apparatus liable to harm health by contacting food and having a harmful effect on it "shall not be sold, manufactured for the purpose of sale, imported, or used in business".
For pharmaceuticals and cosmetics, the prohibition moves from the equipment to the contents
Use the same belt on a pharmaceutical line and the applicable provisions change places. The proviso to Article 4, paragraph 1 of the Food Sanitation Act excludes from food "pharmaceuticals, quasi-pharmaceutical products and regenerative medicine products as provided for in the Act on Securing Quality, Efficacy and Safety of Products Including Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices (Act No. 145 of 1960)". The apparatus standards do not reach that far.
Instead the prohibition attaches to the contents. Article 56 of that Act provides that the pharmaceuticals it lists "shall not be sold, given, or manufactured, imported, stored or displayed for the purpose of sale or gift", and item 7 names "pharmaceuticals in which a foreign substance is mixed or adhering". Item 6 is "pharmaceuticals consisting in whole or in part of a filthy substance or a deteriorated or spoiled substance". Cosmetics are the same: Article 62 provides that "with respect to cosmetics, the provisions of Article 51, Article 52, paragraph 2, and Articles 53 through 57 apply mutatis mutandis".
The difference shows itself in practice. On the food side, what happens is that the equipment can no longer be used. On the pharmaceutical and cosmetic side, what happens is that the goods become something you cannot sell. When wear particles or lubricant reach the product, what stops is not the line but the stock.
For components that handle electricity and radio waves, the procedure comes to the user and the installer
Power supplies have provisions too. Article 27 of the Electrical Appliances and Materials Safety Act provides that "a person engaged in the business of manufacturing, importing or selling electrical appliances and materials shall not sell, or display for the purpose of sale, electrical appliances and materials unless they bear the label under Article 10, paragraph 1". That part concerns the seller.
Article 28, paragraph 2, however, points the other way. "A person engaged in the business of manufacturing articles specified by Cabinet Order that are manufactured using electrical appliances and materials as parts or accessories shall not use electrical appliances and materials in that manufacture unless they bear the label under Article 10, paragraph 1." Paragraph 1 of the same article points the same way for use in work to install or modify electrical facilities. Checking the label is not placed as the seller's task alone.
Contactless charging touches yet another statute. Article 100, paragraph 1 of the Radio Act provides that "a person who intends to install any of the following equipment must obtain the permission of the Minister for Internal Affairs and Communications with respect to that equipment", and item 2 names "equipment other than radio equipment and the equipment in the preceding item that uses high-frequency current of 10 kilohertz or more, as specified by Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications Order". Which equipment falls within scope is set by that Order, but the party the provision places as the applicant is "a person who intends to install". The procedure comes round to the side that bought the component.
So there are two places to look
One is the performance of the component: torque and reduction ratio, stopping accuracy, noise, service life, ingress protection, charging distance and output. This part can be lined up from catalogues, and the exhibits led with it.
The other is where it touches and where it goes. Does the component come into direct contact with food? Does it sit near an open stage of a pharmaceutical or cosmetic process? Does it enter work on electrical facilities? Does it use radio waves? None of this is written on the parts list. It is decided by the side fitting it, and the side the provisions name is the user and the installer.
Decide on the first alone and you can end up with better performance but equipment you cannot use, or stock you cannot sell. It is the point to check one step further after hearing "same specification, this price". Which provisions apply and how varies with the item and with how the equipment is held, and individual applicability is a matter for the competent authority.
We take your enquiry on your behalf
Companies exhibiting are waiting for enquiries. But approaching them one by one means sales contact continues from firms whose terms do not suit you. Components have many specification items, so the more firms there are, the less the comparison works at all.
We have organised the whole of this year's exhibit information, and at the venue we hand our business card to each company. Tell us what the line carries, whether it touches food directly, the speed and load required, and the environment where it will sit, and we will check with the firms whose terms fit and return the answers together. We never pass your contact details to the other party without your consent.
What we hand over is information. We are not the agent or distributor of any single company; we set out several approaches to the same problem side by side. From our position importing and distributing pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and food, we also convey how the component performance question sits against the provisions that attach to what is being carried.
Primary sources consulted
- e-Gov Law Search — Food Sanitation Act (Articles 4, 16 and 18)
- e-Gov Law Search — Act on Securing Quality, Efficacy and Safety of Products Including Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices (Articles 56 and 62)
- e-Gov Law Search — Electrical Appliances and Materials Safety Act (Articles 27 and 28)
- e-Gov Law Search — Radio Act (Article 100)
The descriptions of exhibits in this article organise trends from the exhibit information published by the organiser and from publicly available information on each company's official site. No individual product or company names are given, and no comparison or evaluation of superiority is made. The published content is as of August 2026. Legal classifications and required measures differ according to the form of the transaction, the item, and how the equipment is held; individual applicability is a matter for the judgement of the competent authority.