Smaller food businesses that understand the benefits of automation, but are wary about significant capital investment, now have the option of leasing collaborative robots (cobots) to automate manual tasks at key points in their packaging line. Universal Robots is working with finance firm DLL to offer what it calls this "low-risk" model to help accelerate automation. UK sales manager Mark Gray told Food Manufacture how one Yorkshire pudding company had taken a leasing route to automating its end-of-line. "This way, they were able to have all four lines automated within a year, rather than having to prolong this process over several years," he said. "Also, this comes out of their operational budget rather than capital expenditure."
展开▼
