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'Crisp bread' requires robots' delicate touch

At Wasabröd’s factory in the small hamlet of Filipstad, Sweden, handling fragile crisp bread is no easy task for a company that works hard to retain its dominant position in the industry.

SOFT SUCTION. At crisp maker Wasabr?d, the robotic arm's vacuum pad softly suctions fragile crackers and arranges them in stacks
SOFT SUCTION. At crisp maker Wasabr?d, the robotic arm's vacuum pad softly suctions fragile crackers and arranges them in stacks

Wasabröd’s plant is the biggest crisp bread factory in the world, with a yearly production of more than 37,000 tons. Considering that crisp bread is very light, that corresponds to about 6,000 trailers leaving Wasabröd’s factories every year for world markets, or about 24 per day.

But Wasabröd’s fortunes have not always been so bright: In the late ’80s and early ’90s, it saw its sales plummet by several percentage points per year. Key to the company’s turnaround was finding efficiencies in production and developing new, higher-value products. Today, crisp bread is produced 24/7.

One new product, Solruta Quinoa crisp bread, is stacked and packed 10X10 by a bank of seven ABB IRB 340 FlexPicker™ robots. The solution for the new crisp bread was developed for the Barilla Group in Italy and delivered by the Italian integrator Technopack. The robotic arms’ vacuum pads guarantee less waste when stacking compared to other methods.

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