Project Profile: Biscuit brand tackles crunch with robot buy

Who United Biscuits

Aim Automate packing of twin-pack McVitie’s digestive biscuits

Spend £165,000
What Endoline Versapack
When May 2008

 

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Challenge
Food manufacturer United Biscuits’ McVitie’s Digestives have been on the UK’s supermarket shelves for 160 years and today the brand is the biggest-selling biscuit in the country.

Back in 2007, as the credit crunch was starting to bite, the company decided to launch a twin-pack of McVitie’s Digestives. For consumers this would represent better value for money; but for United Biscuits, it posed the problem of how to pack the twin-pack into secondary or shelf-ready packaging.

Initially, the issue was solved by simply assembling the packs by hand at United Biscuits’ McVitie’s production plant in Harlesden, north-west London.

Mark Springer, United Biscuits site engineering manager, says: "The twin-pack was a new offering to the market and no-one really knew how it would go. But within nine months it was a real success, so we decided to automate the packing operation."

Strategy
With a shopping list of criteria for a machine, not least that it should be "sensibly-priced", Springer then went to the market to find the best piece of kit for the job in hand.

"We wanted something that was not over-complicated, but not cheap and cheerful, and a reliable piece of equipment," says Springer. "The footprint was also very important to us."

Bedfordshire-based end-of-line equipment supplier Endoline had been supplying packing equipment to United Biscuits for two decades and its new Versapack machine, Springer says, "ticked all the boxes".

The Versapack, which has a footprint of 1.8m by 1.8m and height of 2.1m, had recently been created as the result of a joint project between Endoline and fellow UK firm, robotics manufacturer Quin Systems, based in Wokingham.

The machine is a combination of Quin’s high-speed automatic RTheta case packer and Endoline’s 220 series case erecting machine. It launched in 2006, and has since been demonstrated at a number of trade shows including the last Interpack in 2008 and the PPMA show last year, where new features were announced including the possibility of adding extra orientations for packing the primary packs within the secondary or retail-ready packaging.

Implementation
Once the machine had been chosen, Springer says, "the next concern was whether it did what it said on the tin". Yet installation and the switch from hand-packing to relying entirely on the Versapack, following its installation in May 2008, happened very quickly.

"To be honest, we switched to the automation and we’ve never looked back," he says. "The change happened within a week."

Results
Springer says that the machine "hasn’t missed a beat" since it was installed. It runs at speeds of 20 cases, or 100 picks, every minute when at full tilt.

In terms of cost savings, Springer says that the main win has been the machine’s payback time of around 18 months – compared to a target of around 20 months for most of the Harlesden site’s investments. "We used to employ two people per shift to pack the twin-packs, so that’s the saving," says Springer.

In fact, United Biscuits has been so satisfied with the results that the company has bought two more Versapack machines to roll the system out across the rest of the McVitie’s range, which includes HobNobs, Rich Tea, Chocolate Digestives and more.

"The first one was a bit of a trial and we didn’t know what to expect," says Springer. "But the other two will be up and running by the middle of the year." One was installed earlier this year, while the third machine will be delivered in the coming weeks.