Saved space
Energy boost
Packing up to 350 bars per minute, a carton top-loading
robotic system at Nutri-Nation Functional Foods has
dramatically raised productivity.
Text Jack Mans
C
anadian company Nutri-Nation
Functional Foods is a contract
manufacturer of private-label
“functional” food products such
as energy bars, sports nutrition bars and
total meal replacement bars. With a new
robotic carton loader at the company’s fa-
cility in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia,
the company has dramatically improved
productivity and flexibility.
“With the ever-changing diet and nu-
trition market, it is important to partner
with a manufacturer that can respond
quickly to new trends and technolo-
gy,” says company president Richard
Schroeder.
Nutri-Nation began operations in
1998, and now has three production
lines. However, until recently, it packed
bars into cartons manually.
“This had become a problem,” says
Schroeder. “Although we produce trailer-
load quantities for many customers, we
also accept orders
as small as 50,000
bars. And because
we run many differ-
ent bar sizes, we
sometimes have a
number of change-
overs during a single
day. Plus, we needed
different numbers of
The IRB 360 saves
workers as our op-
valuable floor space.
erations changed.”
Schroeder opted for a top loader from
Propack Processing & Packaging Sys-
tems that is equipped with a FlexPick-
er (IRB 360) pick-and-place robot from
ABB. “We have a small plant, and space
was at a premium,” says Schroeder.
A flow wrapper delivers the bars to
a product-infeed conveyor. From there,
the bars are metered into the loader’s
product-indexing conveyor, placing the
bars precisely for pickup. As the cartons
and bars travel through the loader, the
pick-and-place robot synchronizes with
the movement of the bar-indexing con-
veyor to maximize the time that the robot
contacts the bars. (See article featuring
the Indexing Conveyer function on page
4.) The robot picks up bars with vacuum
cups and places them in the cartons. The
system can run different numbers of bars
and cartons.
Schroeder says, “I estimate that we
use two less people now than when we
were hand-picking,” he says.
Robot benefits:
− − overhead conveyer solutions
saves space
− − two less employees than
when hand-picking
− − flexible options for product
size and quantity
Nutri-Nation
Nutri-Nation Functional Foods is
part of a family-owned and oper-
ated manufacturing and market-
ing group which includes Bio-Care
Laboratories, Flash 5 Energy Foods,
Aalphene Research and Poor Rich-
ard’s Distributing Corp. Founded in
1971, the company operates out of
Port Coquitlam, British Columbia,
near Vancouver.
For more information, check out
www.nutri-nation.com.
In this product example, the FlexPicker robot picks up eight bars at a time and places four bars in each of two cartons on each cycle. The
cartons are released after two cycles, so each carton ends up with eight bars.
ABB robotics 2|10
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