ABB Robots in the Bakery, From Packing to Piping

Bakeries automated mixing long ago but kept decorating by hand. See how ABB FlexPicker robots pack pastries and where cake-decorating robots could go next.

INDUSTRIAL ROBOTICS

Chat With Robot

9/23/20261 min read

Bakeries ran on people for most of their history. Crews of bakers worked the dough and the ovens by hand, often starting in the middle of the night. Machines took over mixing, depositing and baking long ago, but the finishing work mostly stayed with people.

Old black and white photo of a group of bakers in white aprons outside a bakery
Old black and white photo of a group of bakers in white aprons outside a bakery

Bakers of L. Freund and Brothers in an early 20th-century group photo. Photo: DPLA / Wikimedia Commons (no known restrictions)

Decoration was the hardest part to hand over. Piping buttercream or icing a batch of cookies takes a steady hand and a good eye, and seasonal ranges change the design every few weeks. So it stayed expensive to automate and hard to staff.

Hand squeezing a piping bag to draw green swirls on a white cake
Hand squeezing a piping bag to draw green swirls on a white cake

Piping buttercream onto a cake by hand. Photo: Michael Prudhomme, CakesMadeEasy.com / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.5)

On August 27, Bakery & Snacks described decorating machines from First Technology, nicknamed Connie, Freddie and Eddie, that print images straight onto cookies and confectionery. The same article covered robotic icing and 3D-formed pastry, which move more decoration work from the piping bag to software.

Several ABB FlexPicker delta robots over a conveyor of round pastries
Several ABB FlexPicker delta robots over a conveyor of round pastries

ABB IRB 360 FlexPicker robots picking chocolate balls at Delicato. Photo: ABB

ABB robots do the fast, hygienic work on the packing side. At Delicato's bakery south of Stockholm, four IRB 360 FlexPicker robots use ABB's PickMaster vision to pick the company's chocolate balls off the conveyor and drop them into blister trays at a very fast pace.

Close-up of a blue soft gripper on an ABB FlexPicker robot
Close-up of a blue soft gripper on an ABB FlexPicker robot

A soft FlexPicker gripper built for delicate pastries. Photo: ABB

According to ABB, staffing costs on that line fell by about 40 percent, and hygiene standards became easier to keep. Smaller bakeries could use a GoFa cobot to fill cartons next to staff without a safety fence, which is what one already does with bagged nuts at a snack plant in Vietnam.

Worker in a hairnet next to an enclosed ABB robot packing cell
Worker in a hairnet next to an enclosed ABB robot packing cell

An operator watches the FlexPicker packing cell at Delicato's bakery. Photo: ABB

Home baking is still almost entirely manual, apart from the stand mixer. I can picture a kitchen robot that pipes a birthday message or ices a tray of cookies from a photo. It would need camera vision like PickMaster's and the kind of precise path control ABB's arms already have.

Red stand mixer with a steel bowl on a granite kitchen counter
Red stand mixer with a steel bowl on a granite kitchen counter

A stand mixer, the one machine most home bakers already own. Photo: Cristiano Betta / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

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