Due to their harsh environments, food processing facilities are difficult to automate. Without automation a lot of heavy work is being done manually, leading to health and safety risks, bad ergonomic conditions, difficulty to procure and retain necessary labor force, as well as low efficiency in the production line. With Capra Carrier running at Danish Crown, these issues have been resolved.
Read more about the project and see if Capra Carrier Food might be the solution you are looking for.
Table of contents:
At a glance
IMPACT FOR ONE FLOW
50+ carts transported autonomously every day
Yearly savings: 80.537 EUR
Payback Time: 14,9 months
5-year NPV: 226.825 EUR
Internal Interest Rate: 8,5%
CUSTOMER: Danish Crown
INDUSTRY: Food processing / Meat
LOCATION: Blans/Sønderborg, Denmark
SOLUTION: Capra Robotics Food Solution
CART COMPATIBILITY: Standard process carts
Background
Danish Crown is one of Europe’s largest meat processors. At the Blans/Sønderborg site, fresh-meat production runs continuously at high volume, with process carts moving between stations at every stage of the line. Staffing the manual transport work had become increasingly difficult, and the physical impact of the work was affecting operations. The team began looking for a way to automate the flow without disrupting production.
Challenge
Main Story
Danish Crown came to Capra Robotics with a clear brief and a preference for proving value before committing to scale. Before deployment, both teams agreed on measurable performance criteria: 50 or more carts per day, 85% uptime, and sustained autonomous operation for 30 consecutive days. The solution, which is washdown-rated for cold and humid washdown environments, fit the brief. The robot docks, moves, and delivers process carts along fixed routes between stations. Integration left production untouched, and the robot was running the routes prior to the agreed commissioning timeline.
The Load Carrier
The Capra Robotics Food Solution is built around the load carrier itself. Capra Robotics designed the docking and handling around the standard process carts already used across food production, so the solution works with the equipment your plant already owns. Because that carrier follows a recognized industry format, the same solution
transfers cleanly to other lines and other sites running the same carts, with no retooling and no bespoke fabrication.
Results
The deployment met every agreed performance criterion: 50 or more carts per day, >95% robot availability, and continuous autonomous operation across 30 consecutive days. The robots now handle cart transport across all shifts at the specified throughput, removing the repeated heavy handling task and its associated injury risk from the operation entirely. The operators’ roles have been redeployed to more value-added work, increasing the output value at the end of the day.
Next steps
With Blans now running the Capra Robotics solution at full scale, the next step is extending it across Danish Crown’s wider network of production facilities. What began as a single proven deployment is becoming a repeatable standard that the group can roll out site by site. It is a direction food processors operating at comparable scale across Europe are increasingly choosing to follow.
Now that the solution is ready to be rolled out at other production facilities, is yours one of them?
Do you have a similar challenge? Reach out to Lau to find out how Capra Carrier Food can help you.
Do you have a similar challenge? Reach out to Lau to find out how Capra Carrier Food can help you.
Lau H. Ringgren
tlf: +45 2015 1769
