The invention relates to an apparatus for and a method of manipulating a plurality of articles. The apparatus preferably is a tertiary packaging apparatus capable of receiving a single-file stream of articles (21), preferably from a secondary packaging apparatus (10). The apparatus comprises a dividing element (33) for splitting a received single-file strea m of articles into two or more adjacent streams and an aligning element for collating articles in adjacent streams into an aligned rank of articles.</SD OAB>
