Bakery
Made fresh, packed fast
with Schubert automation
The Challenge
To keep up with growing consumer demand, Carolina Foods needed to significantly increase its production capacity. The legacy facility was limited in both space and automation, making it difficult to scale operations efficiently. Labor shortages and rising costs added to the pressure, highlighting the need for a packaging solution that could automate both primary and secondary packaging processes.
Additionally, the company produces a wide variety of baked goods, each with different sizes and packaging formats - requiring a flexible solution that could handle multiple SKUs on a single line. Gentle product handling was also essential to preserve the quality of delicate pastries like honey buns during wrapping and packing.
Ultimately, Carolina Foods required a future-ready, space-efficient system that would increase output, reduce manual labor, accommodate various product formats, and maintain high product integrity throughout the packaging process.
The Solution
To help Carolina Foods overcome its space limitations, labor challenges, and rising demand, Schubert delivered a fully automated, robot-based packaging system that integrates both primary and secondary packaging in one streamlined process.
The solution begins at the end of the baking line, where products move down a spiraling cooling belt and onto a spreading belt for optimal spacing. From there, Schubert’s vision system detects each product’s position and orientation, sending data to high-speed F4 robots for accurate, gentle handling, essential for the company’s delicate pastries like honey buns.
Each item is then individually flow-wrapped using Schubert’s Flowmodul, before passing through weighing and metal detection. The wrapped products are seamlessly transferred into the Tray Packer, where F2 robots erect trays and F4 robots load products precisely into them.
Schubert’s compact counterflow design ensures this entire process operates efficiently in limited floor space, while accommodating:
This comprehensive solution not only helped Carolina Foods double its output without increasing headcount, but also gave the company a future-ready, flexible packaging system with room for growth.
The investment in a Schubert packaging system has replaced many repetitive, manual tasks with higher-skilled roles that add value through expertise and a focus on quality. Currently, our new line produces twice the output of our existing bakery, while using almost the same number of employees with twice the volume.
Dan Myers
CEO, Carolina Foods
