South Africa’s food and beverage (F&B) industry has never seen the future more uncertain as the consequences of Covid-19 have changed the consumption habits of changing consumers and retailers, supply networks have been halted along with analysis on food safety.
They have been struggling to keep up with mega-trends like digitization and the evolution of shopping habits. The good news is that this could be the ideal time for the local food and beverage business to reinvent itself for the future.
To react to changing tastes and needs of customers, food and beverage companies increasingly require flexibility in their manufacturing processes. They want higher levels of production and efficiency, while maintaining the highest product quality standards. The installation of a robotic system, which makes F&B operations safer and more productive
In a business survey conducted by the ABB group in January 2021 of 1,650 large and small companies in Europe, the North American country and China, 84% of companies said they could introduce or increase the use of AI and automation in the next decade. Another part was looking to robotics to help them improve the health and safety of the work point, and more than a third are considering the application of robotics to improve the work level of their employees.
There is a belief that robotics is considered an expensive solution and there is still a fear that robots will accept human jobs. This has led the South African food and beverage industry to lag behind in the innovation of production lines with the implementation of robotic systems. The truth is that none of these statements is correct. Robotics-enabled plants have considerably fewer failures and much better performance. The cost of a plant that has a failure and must be stopped for several hours, this greatly exceeds that of a robot. To cope with increased production, plants that install robots generally end up producing more and generating additional human employment.
The reality is that robotics is not a new term. Almost half of companies said they were trying to get robotics to help them improve health and safety in the workplace, fifty-one percent said robotics could improve social distancing, and more than a common fraction were considering use robotic automation to improve the level of work of your employees. In these times of pandemic, robotic tools play a critical role in ensuring food safety, ensuring that staff work safely and eliminating contamination and transmission of viruses, bacteria or germs.
Nestlé, the world’s largest food and beverage company, is using ABB robots to improve pallet loading efficiency at its chocolate manufacturing plants in Brazil by 53 percent, thanks to a new palletizing robot solution. By deploying a single palletizing robot, a South African beverage factory has reduced the danger of damage and increased production as well. The palletizer makes it possible to increase production quantities while reducing risk. The robots have allowed other South African food companies to improve their production levels by allowing line speeds that would be impossible to maintain if packed by hand.
While the main goal is to increase productivity and reduce costs, we also found that robots provide a lot of flexibility in situations where our customers have a variety of product sizes and packaging shapes. Some F&B traders have expressed concern about the lack of the necessary skills to use robots. Employees familiar with using a tablet or smartphone will find it easy to configure and reprogram the new robots using quick setup and simple ABB software tools.
For all information, please don’t hesitate to contact us: we will be ready to help you and to discover the best solution for your project.