High-performance palletizing system for salad dressing bottles

A high-performance palletizing system at Bruno's Best AG ensures quick and easy palletizing of chilled Brunos salad dressings. The robot system links seamlessly to the upstream automated processes and enables production to be further increased and growing order volumes to be handled without any problems.

The challenge

Brunos Best salad dressings are a success story. In order to be able to continue to deliver just-in-time and cope with the constantly growing demand, the family business was looking for an automation solution for the palletizing process. The aim of the project was an easy-to-operate, flexible and efficient palletizing system with an upstream packer/shrink wrapper.

However, the limited space available posed a challenge. The new system also had to match the quality and quantity of the upstream, already automated processes. Other challenging key points were the cycle time, changing palletizing patterns and different bottle sizes.

The solution

A powerful industrial robot with a high payload forms the heart of the new palletizing system. It performs the palletizing tasks at the desired cycle rate and fits perfectly into the limited space available. A multifunctional gripper and changeover without manual interaction ensure the desired flexibility of the system, which can be easily expanded with new palletizing patterns. 

Each palletizing cycle starts with an empty Euro pallet. It is provided to the robot via a roller conveyor before it picks up an intermediate cardboard layer and begins stacking the packs. The individually filled bottles are automatically grouped into units of 6, 10 and 12, positioned and packed/shrink-wrapped. 

Depending on the layer pattern, the robot takes one to four packs to form a stable stack. Once the palletizing pattern is complete, the pallet is automatically transported out of the cell and then shrink-wrapped with protective film. 

“We are very satisfied with the new palletizing system. It fully meets our requirements in terms of quality and quantity and fits perfectly into our infrastructure.”

Michael Arnold, Managing Director
Bruno's Best AG

The project

The design and construction of the feeding/gripping technology required all our engineering expertise. Due to the limited space available, a clever gripping system was required to make optimum use of the robot's degrees of freedom. Many preliminary tests and the resulting in-house developments ultimately resulted in a compact, powerful palletizing system.