Image courtesy of Foodonline.com

The food and beverage industry spent $456.1 million on industrial robots in 2017, accounting for 13 percent of all such sales in the Americas that year. Advances in artificial intelligence, as well as hardware innovations that permit robots to remain functional after undergoing the hygienic procedures required in food manufacturing facilities, may account for this sudden growth.

While the majority of industrial robots are employed in the automotive industry, the food and beverage industry spent the second-greatest amount of cash on them in 2017. Image credit ProFood Tech and PMMI.

In a 2018 Association for Packaging and Processing Technologies (PMMI) white paper, the increased adoption of robots in the labor-intensive areas of meat processing, fruit and vegetable handling, and picking and placing of processed food is examined in terms of its feasibility and cost. At present, the use of robots to pick items from an assembly item and place them in the correct orientation for packing is widespread. Handling produce, however, is a task that is generally left up to sensitive human hands to reduce the risk of bruising fruits and vegetables. Recent advances in end-of-arm gripper technology, particularly in the sensitivity of pressure-sensing feedback required to avoid damaging produce, makes robot use more viable in fruit and vegetable handling.

The hygienic conditions required by most food processing plants are inimical to many previous incarnations of industrial robots, many of which deteriorated under washdown and disinfectant procedures. Current robots being used in factories have more plastic than steel components, use food-grade grease and have easy-to-clean epoxy coating on their grippers.

How Will Robots Affect Food & Beverage Manufacturing Workers?

The emerging market for robots that can undergo robust hygienic procedures is driven by the potential economic benefits of replacing human labor with mechanical equipment.

The average wages paid out to factory employees per year are already higher than the cost of purchasing an average industrial robot. Robot prices are predicted to decrease while wages remain roughly the same. Image credit: PMMI.

Factory employees may be displaced by these industrial robots, but for many, it could be a move upward. Engineers and designers of new applications to monitor the robots on the factory floor will be needed, and it is cheaper for companies to retrain their old employees than to hire new ones. If innovation continues at this pace it is possible that dangerous operations requiring high dexterity, such as meat butchering, could one day be delegated to robots. Whether this will open up new opportunities to current meat plant employees, or render them jobless, will depend on the demand for upskilling workers within a given company.

The upcoming ProFood Tech trade show, to be held in Chicago on March 26-29, will exhibit the latest industrial robots suitable for the food and beverage markets, as well as offering seminars on implementing disruptive technology in manufacturing plants.

For more information on industrial robots used for food processing, check out this squeaky-clean robot engineered to package dairy products and the Delta robot that packages chocolate pralines.