Solving the Challenge of Automating Soft, Low-Temperature Bakery Products
Automation in the bakery industry has advanced rapidly, but delicate desserts such as semi-frozen mousse cakes remain extremely challenging to handle at scale.
Semi-frozen mousse cakes typically require handling at 5–8°C during downstream packaging. Under these conditions, product texture can vary significantly. Some areas remain soft and sticky, while others become firmer due to low temperatures. Traditional rigid grippers often cause deformation, sticking, product loss, and inconsistent appearance quality.
As a result, many leading bakery manufacturers still rely heavily on manual operations for tray loading, lid placement, and packaging. This creates challenges including limited production capacity, high labor dependency, and inconsistent quality.
The Challenge: Building a Fully Automated Workflow
A leading bakery manufacturer supplying chilled mousse cakes to supermarket chains faced these challenges. Before automation, each packaging line required four operators for product organization and tray loading.
Key challenges included:
1. Single-point automation could not complete the entire packaging workflow.
2. Food safety requirements demanded hygienic and easy-to-clean equipment.
3. Product variety required flexible automation with fast changeover capability.
SRT’s Solution: Soft Robotic Handling for Low-Temperature Bakery Products
SRT developed a customized automated tray-loading solution combining soft gripping technology, robotic coordination, and intelligent vision systems.
The system integrates:
- SRT proprietary soft robot fingers
- Spider robots
- High-precision vision positioning
- R2/R3 robotic arms
Together, these technologies create a fully automated workflow covering product sorting, gripping, tray loading, tray separation, lid handling, and final closing.
Core Technology 1: Gentle and Reliable Gripping
SRT’s soft grippers use an air-driven soft gripping structure that adapts naturally to different product conditions.
The four-sided wrapping motion provides:
- Even force distribution
- Adaptive contact with irregular surfaces
- Reduced mechanical stress
- Stable gripping without compression damage
During production validation at 5–8°C, the system successfully handled both softer semi-thawed products and firmer low-temperature products with:
- No surface damage
- No deformation
- No dropping
- No cream sticking issues
SRT soft robotic gripper features quick-change and easy-clean design, meeting food production hygiene requirements.
Core Technology 2: Complete Automation from Handling to Packaging
SRT created a complete automated packaging cell covering:
- Product feeding and positioning
- Automated gripping
- Tray loading
- Tray separation
- Lid picking
- Precision lid placement
The vision system enables accurate recognition of different tray structures, product positions, and packaging components.
Designed for Future Product Expansion
SRT’s automation solution allows manufacturers to adapt to new product sizes, shapes, and packaging formats through end-of-arm tool replacement, additional feeding modules, and software adjustments without major equipment reconstruction.
Production Results
After implementation, the customer achieved:
1. Stable high-speed production:
1,800 boxes per hour continuous production capacity.
2. Consistent product quality:
Gentle robotic handling improved product appearance consistency.
3. Reduced labor dependency:
Reduced manual labor requirements by 4–6 operators per line and decreased labor dependency by more than 80%.
4. Improved production continuity:
Single loading capacity reached up to 500 pieces, reducing interruptions caused by frequent material replenishment.
The Future of Bakery Automation
The successful automation of mousse cake production demonstrates that even highly delicate bakery products can achieve reliable mass production with the right robotic technology.
SRT’s flexible soft gripping solutions are designed for:
- Soft bakery products
- Dessert packaging
- Tray loading
- Pick-and-place operations
- Delicate food handling processes
Contact SRT to explore how flexible robotic technology can help automate delicate food handling processes.