machinery
Packaging automation
set to aid food manufacture growth in the wake of covid-19
A
utomation is set to play an increasingly larger role in safeguarding the future of the UK’s
food manufacturing industry, and the Chancellor’s recent super-deduction tax allowance on plant and machinery announcement is set to give the sector the boost it needs. While most UK food manufacturers
understood the efficiencies gained from automation, adoption was at a far slower pace than other countries. However, COVID-19 has emphasised the need to update manual manufacturing practices that will prevent many from recovering quickly once social distancing measures are lifted. According to a recent post by the
International Federation of Robots (IFR) in comparison to several countries across the world, the UK was the only country, over a 10-year period, to report a nine per cent decrease in productivity per person. While coronavirus has undoubtedly put a
strain on global productivity, UK manufacturers faced significant issues because of workers being unable to work in production lines where they normally stand less than 50 cm apart on 12-hour shifts. There is an established link between
automation and increased productivity, so now is the time for UK manufacturers to look at long term growth and invest in automation to support labour intensive activities.
DEmonstrAting flExibilitY For some food manufacturers, a wariness to change well established manual processes, and an aversion to the risks that new technologies can bring, have created major roadblocks, preventing them from reaping the many benefits automated systems can yield. Within food manufacturing, the variability
of materials has played a major factor, particularly as many believe that uniformity plays a vital role in ensuring automation runs efficiently. To meet retail demand, manufacturers are producing an abundance of brand varieties in all shapes and sizes which can cause greater complexities, due to the variation in size, shape, quality, and weight of the product. “Retailers are constantly vying for
Here, Andrew Yates, managing director of Endoline Automation, discusses the reasons why the UK has lagged behind its global counterparts when it comes to automation, how automated end-of-line packaging systems today meets manufacturer demands, and how machinery can be integrated into processing and packing lines quickly to ramp up output.
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consumer attention, creating greater choices which are continually changing. Historically, this hasn’t always lent itself well to automation and manufacturers need assurances that the investment they make in end-of-line packaging automation is future- proof,” says Andrew Yates, managing director of Endoline Automation. Fully automated end-of-line systems today can manage an unprecedented range of case styles and sizes and have been re-engineered to handle a wide variety of case materials to suit retail specifications, from poorly scored, lightweight cases, to heavy, twin wall cases. Random systems, with integrated bar code
Summer 2021 UKManufacturing
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