Abstract: In a manufacturing system utilizing a cigarette maker linked to a packer, cigarettes temporarily surplus to requirements are stored in containers, each provided with an opening by way of which it can be filled and emptied. An empty container is picked up from a first magazine stocked with a supply of the empty containers, filled with cigarettes at a loading hopper, and placed in a second magazine lying alongside the first magazine and holding full containers; the transfer movement from the hopper to the second magazine is brought about along a circular path centered on a vertical axis between the magazines, utilizing a rotary mechanism equipped with plates on which the single containers are taken up, filled and carried through the circular trajectory.