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‘Safe-tea’ palletizing of capsules at Nestlé

Manual palletizing at Nestle’s Swiss facility producing tea capsules is replaced with two user-friendly collaborative robot palletizers custom-designed to ensure pallet stability and worker safety.

A collaborative robot palletizer accurately places the light, long, and narrow cases of tea capsules in a tight configuration.
A collaborative robot palletizer accurately places the light, long, and narrow cases of tea capsules in a tight configuration.

According to Euromonitor International, the global market for tea is projected to increase $7.9 billion between 2017 and 2022, due to growing trends toward premiumization, the addition of exotic flavors in mature markets, and tea’s health positioning. Given the growth potential for this market, Nestlé Suisse SA Orbe recently ramped up production of its Special.T tea capsules at its facility in Orbe, Switzerland—a move that required additional equipment automation.

In 2017, Nestlé approached Sidel about the possibility of using collaborative robot palletizing on two of its capsule lines. “In the past, this plant, equipped with low- and medium-speed lines, was handling palletizing manually. As volume and productivity needed to increase, we were looking to use cobotic palletizing to avoid repetitive, non-ergonomic tasks for operators. We wanted them to handle activities with higher added value,” explains Cédric Rey, Fill & Pack Maintenance & Improvement Manager at Nestlé Suisse SA Orbe.

At the time Nestlé reached out to Sidel for this automated solution, Sidel was already working on developing a new cobotic palletizing solution and was therefore able to directly embed the customer’s requirements into their new program. Among these were accuracy for pallet stability, user-friendliness, and operator safety.

“At our Orbe site, best-in-class pallet quality is absolutely key, as our cases with the tea capsules are very light, long, and narrow. This is why accurate case placement on the pallet and tight layers are major requirements to guarantee pallet stability,” says Rey. Pallet stability ensures the loads make it through the full supply chain without any disruption to their integrity, so products arrive in consumers’ hands without damage.

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