Automated system cuts costs and picks a better biscuit

Northern Foods has reduced running costs and improved product quality at its Fox's Biscuits plant in Batley, Yorkshire, thanks to the installation of an automated packaging system.

The high-performance line, which includes four Schubert TLM-F44 units with eight robot arms that rapidly pick and place more than 600 biscuits a minute into plastic insert trays, has replaced a labour-intensive, manual packing operation.

Schubert has also incorporated its latest generation of vision system so only the product that conforms to the correct quality is packed and any broken or misshapen biscuits are rejected.

"The Schubert system has brought many benefits to the line from reducing our reliance on temporary staff to lowering costs of the operation along with an improvement in the quality of the pack," says plant manager Richard Charlesworth.

"Overall, the most important benefit is the quality of the finished product as it is no longer touched by hand and we always have the right amount of quality biscuits inserted. Historically, on edge packing had proved to be a problem."

The introduction of the new system also meant that Fox's could further improve productivity by speeding up the line supplying the biscuits to the Schubert machine.

Contact: Schubert UK Tel: 01676 525825​