Marel Food Systems has joined PicknPack--a consortium of European companies, industry professionals and organizations that combine their expertise in an effort to develop flexible robotic systems for automated adaptive packaging of fresh and processed food products.

PicknPack’s primary goal is to give the European food industry a vital competitive advantage in the rapidly changing marketplace of the future, where customers demand higher quality, more choice and increased safety--all for lower prices. The project is based around three modules:

• Food quality inspection: A sensing module that assesses quality of individual or small batch products before or after packaging.
• Robotic food handling: A vision controlled robotic handling module that picks up and separates the product from a harvest bin or transport system and places it in the right position in a package.
• Adaptive packaging: An adaptive packaging module that can accommodate various types of packaging with flexibility in terms of package shape, size, product environment, sealing, and printing.

Final results of the PicknPack project will be presented at a workshop in the Netherlands at the end of May 2016. At this time, the robotic packaging systems created by the group will be demonstrated in real-time.