FOOD & BEVERAGE T
AUTOMATING THE FOOD SECTOR: EFFICIENCY IN ACTION
he food and beverage industry has been slower to adopt automation than some other areas of manufacturing. Short-term supplier contracts and a reliance on cheap labour have proved obstacles to investment for some food producers, limiting their ability to grow their production capabilities.
Fortunately, automation systems incorporating robotics from leading suppliers such as FANUC are now becoming a common sight in many food factories around the UK, boosting productivity, improving worker welfare and enabling
manufacturers to swiftly respond to changing customer demand. Accurate, reliable and fast, robots are ideal for repetitive, dull or laborious tasks where people add little value, such as packing, picking, placing and palletising – leaving the valuable human workforce to concentrate on the parts of production where they can make a real difference.
GÜ INDULGENT FOODS – INCREASING CAPACITY THROUGH AUTOMATION One company reaping the benefits of automation is Gü Indulgent Foods. Since their first chocolate
soufflé pots hit the shelves in 2003, the firm has been on a strong upward trajectory. As demand soared, Gü needed to expand its packing hall at its production facility in Bishops Stortford, Hertfordshire. It turned to FANUC partner Tekpak Automation, based in Wexford, for an automated answer to its productivity problem. “Gü requested a second packing line that needed to fit into a very compact area,” explains Darragh Sinnott, technical director for Tekpak Automation. “They also wanted greater cartoning and palletising flexibility. This new line needed to handle Gü’s new quad-packs – the quad-pack x4 – as well as the existing variety of case formats: twin-packs x6 and twin-packs x4.”
SIMULATION SOFTWARE AND PROGRAMMING PROWESS
Tekpak set about designing a system that could meet these exacting demands. With the help of FANUC’s virtual programming software, ROBOGUIDE, it determined the exact robot models – paying attention to requirements for payload, speed and reach – that would alleviate Gü’s production capacity constraints.
“The end-to-end packaging line we installed begins at the depalletising stage,” explains Sinnott. “Gü’s filled glass ramekins are skimmed off two pallets, one layer at a time, onto a pair of receiving conveyors. One FANUC R-2000iC/165F six-axis
Winter 2025/2026 UKManufacturing
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