AUTOMATION & PROCESS CONTROL
“When it comes to confectionery manufacturing, the more process steps that can be automated, the more stable and reliable production becomes”
Mark van der Burgt, Chief Commercial Officer at Vetipak
takes up the story: “We recently made an investment to develop our facilities in the Netherlands, including a fully controlled building with temperature, air pressure and humidity control, as well as automated production lines which incorporate robotics technology.” Ensuring safety and quality, the new facilities enable Vetipak to package a large variety of products that arrive in huge numbers. Vetipak is responsible for ensuring that these products are put in the right packages – such as retail and promotional packages, luxury gift boxes as well as special versions for seasonal promotion or duty- free zones. Mark continues: “Our packaging lines needed to be able to
handle high volumes and a wide variety of products being packaged. We also wanted solutions that would be easy to use, and which could also work safely and seamlessly alongside operators.” “One of our confectionery packaging lines required a large
output and the other needed to be scalable to meet our possible future needs. It was important to find a flexible solution that can meet changing consumer demand in terms of different volumes and designs. It is also important for us to be able to repurpose the robots later if necessary. For example, if we redesigned a line, we would want to be able to use the same robots and technology on the new line,” Mark explained. The company’s chosen systems integrator installed Omron
articulated six-axis robots with a maximum payload of 5kg and their controllers, as well as the conveyors and it built the control cabinet. The controller has been developed for applications that require high-speed processing for machine control, safety, reliability, and maintainability. It enables users to increase the speed and accuracy of production, while reducing maintenance requirements.
The time is now Automating production processes can offer confectionery manufacturers a wide range of benefits, including improved consistency and quality control, increased productivity and cost savings, enhanced safety, flexibility in meeting market demands, and valuable data analysis. It isn’t necessary to move directly to fully automated production processes but do look at where automation may help remove problem areas and bottlenecks on your process lines whatever route you choose remember that ever more confectionery producers are starting to reap the benefits of automation. It’s time to let go of any concerns and to embrace the digital era or risk being outpaced by your competitors.
22 Kennedy’s Confection May 2023ction July 2023 Bahlsen automates its packaging process
Bahlsen recently set out to update the secondary packaging for its PiCK UP! biscuit bar. With sustainability as a priority for the organisation it wanted to move to a more environmentally friendly automated packaging solution. Traditionally its PiCK UP! bars have been packaged into flowpacks, grouped together and covered with labels. To produce more sustainably, Bahlsen wanted to replace this secondary packaging with folding cartons made of cardboard and so it needed a new automated packaging solution that would be able to to ensure that the biscuit bars were not damaged during the packaging process. It also wanted to use thinner films for its flowpacks to help achieve material savings. The secondary packaging machine would also need to be able to handle this change. Bahlsen involved Schubert early on in the packaging
development of the new folding cartons to ensure that the new packaging materials were optimised to work with the packaging machine. For example, the box blanks were designed with crease and score lines to facilitate easy and quick erection of the carton, with the layout of the blanks also being improved. To complement the existing production lines, Schubert designed a packaging line with two identical bar packers, positioned one behind the other, taking up little space in the hall and which could pack in parallel, independently of each other. The entire packaging process – including the erecting,
filling and sealing steps – now runs fully automatically in the line. Schubert’s robot technology enables gentle product handling and a controlled process from start to finish to increase efficiency and minimise waste. At the same time, Bahlsen has saved 112 tonnes of plastic per year thanks to the new folding carton design and the flowpacks’ thinner films. With the new packaging solution, the biscuit bars, which
are already packed into flowpacks, are now placed into their secondary packaging in the bar packing machines. First, the flat blanks are fed into the system and depending on the format, a robot takes up to six blanks from the magazine and transfers them to another robot that erects the cartons. The folded boxes are then placed onto a transport robot and moved to the filling station. In parallel, the PiCK UP! bars are fed into the process via a feeder and pre-grouped. A robot then picks up several bars at a time with a suction gripper and transfers a predefined number of pieces, depending on the format, into the open cartons. The transport robot then moves them to the final sealing step. The solution can process up to 850 biscuit bars per minute.
KennedysConfection.com
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