Frozen food manufacturer Wagner, which at peak times produces 900 of its Piccolinis pizza snacks/min, has installed a SIG Pack Systems robotic packaging system to help meet increasing demand.
Up to 100 boxes of Piccolinis are packed every minute at the company’s 24-hour-a-day operation factory in Germany’s Saarland. To accommodate rapidly rising turnover, technical director Richard Ristau decided to switch from an existing cartoner to a SIG robotic packing system. He says the equipment is not only more compact and less complex to use but has also “vastly increased” production rates.
After packing in threes on a SIG HBM pillow pack machine, pizza snacks are spread across three lanes and transferred to three new SIG Delta robots. Each can place over 100 triple Piccolini packs/min into ready-made boxes from the carton former.
A vision system ensures each robot accurately locates each pack and precisely places it in the carton. The boxes are then closed, sealed and cased.