Abstract: An endless conveyor has equispaced sections provided with respective arrays of recesses designed to receive cup-shaped containers which are to be filled, covered by lids, sealed and date-stamped in respective stations past which the conveyor is intermittently advanced in steps equaling the width of a section. Each array consists of two parallel rows of recesses, transverse to the direction of conveyor motion, which are relatively staggered by half a pitch and have centerlines spaced apart by less than that pitch whereby the lids of containers seated in adjoining recesses overlap one another in both the longitudinal and the transverse direction. Each operating station coacts during each cycle with a leading and a trailing row of recesses, but not necessarily of the same array; thus, a dispensing station and a printing station consist each of two synchronized units respectively serving one row of an upstream section and a nonadjoining row of a downstream section.