Collaborative robot handles 1.5 million eggs per day

Cascina Italia processes millions of eggs per day. The competitive nature of the fresh food market means that the company must respond quickly to market demands.

In order to do this effectively, Cascina Italia sought to optimise its internal processes through automation. However, traditional robot solutions can be expensive and difficult to implement into a live production environment.

Safety is also a major concern — the egg processor has limited space for additional equipment and any solution that they chose needed to be installed in close proximity to employees.

Cascina Italia worked with Alumotion to design and specify a collaborative robot solution that prepares boxes on the packaging facility production line. The UR5 robot from Universal Robots is installed on one of the 24 production line output stations and handles around 1.5 million eggs per day.

This pilot installation is aimed at relieving the facilities operators from one of the most arduous processes — preparing the bulky packages for large-scale distribution — while improving flexibility and operational efficiency at the factory.

The UR5 robot prepares boxes containing 144 cartons of 10 eggs. The small compact size of the robot allows the unit to be installed directly on the production line without having to sacrifice valuable space. And, as the UR robots can operate without fencing, after a safety audit they have been able to work alongside employees without protective barriers.