Six-Axis Robots Palletize Carlsberg Beverages

By Kevin Kozuszek

December 25, 2006

(Six-Axis Robots Palletize Carlsberg Beverages :  Page 1 of 1 )

Carlsberg Breweries is one of the world's largest brewing groups. Its core markets are the Nordic region, Eastern Europe, the United Kingdom and Asia. The breweries sell around 7,000 million liters of beer via subsidiaries and affiliated companies and 2,000 million liters of mineral water and soft drinks. Carlsberg's location in Sweden is part of the international Carlsberg Breweries Group , and was formed by a merger of the Swedish Pripps-Ringnes Group and Carlsberg A/S of Denmark.

Carlsberg's brewery in Sweden produces large quantities of many different products that need to be palletized for shipment. The company had been using a layering palletizer which was sufficient for palletizing one continuous standard product. However, changes within the consumer beverage industry necessitated the need for the company to produce and palletzize many different types of products and the layering palletizer was no longer the most efficient method.

The traditional palletizing system required reconfiguration when new products were presented to it resulting in significant costly down time for the company. The company required a new fast, flexible and more efficient method to accommodate their changing palletizing needs.

The company researched and studied the advantages of a six-axis robot palletizing system. Today its products are palletized by a KUKA KR 500 robot with a load capacity of 500 kg. The robot stacks trays of bottles fed to it by two conveyor lines. The trays are distributed on the two conveyors in a pre-specified stacking pattern.

Robots help reduce downtime for beverage palletizing.

A pusher then moves the trays from the conveyor to the robot's gripper staging area where the robot then centers the trays and transfers the layer to the pallet.

 Page 1 of 1