Diagnostic Test Kit Manufacturing: ABB Robots

Diagnostic test kit manufacturing sounds simple until you count the parts. A single rapid test is a membrane strip, a plastic cassette, a buffer vial, a swab, a foil pouch, instructions and a carton, and factories turn out millions of them. This post traces lateral flow tests from their chromatography roots to the pregnancy test and the COVID-19 scale-up, then looks at how test kits are assembled today. It also covers where ABB robots such as YuMi, GoFa and the IRB 1300 Clean Room could fit, using a real ABB assembly line for medical components as the closest example.

A boxed NHS COVID-19 self-test, a rapid antigen lateral flow kit. Photo: Marc Auledas / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

How lateral flow tests grew out of chromatography

Lateral flow tests derive from paper chromatography, developed in 1943 by Martin and Synge. ELISA followed in 1971 and uses the same affinity principle, in which an antibody grabs a target molecule. In 1980 Unipath scientists, including Philip Porter, Paul Davis and Keith May, patented paired monoclonal antibody technology: one antibody anchors the target and a second, labelled antibody makes it visible. The photo shows A. J. P. Martin at the International Symposium on Gas Chromatography in Amsterdam in 1958, a few years before the first immunoassays appeared.

A. J. P. Martin, co-developer of paper chromatography, in Amsterdam in 1958. Photo: J.D. Noske, Nationaal Archief via Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

The first product to bring this to ordinary people was a pregnancy test. Unipath launched the original Clearblue in June 1985, and Clearblue One Step followed in 1988, described as the first commercially available lateral flow device. A urine sample wicks along a strip, a labelled antibody catches the hormone hCG, and a coloured line appears. A lateral flow strip is cheap and needs no instrument, so the format later spread to drug-of-abuse screening and infectious disease tests, which share the same cassette and strip design.

An opened pregnancy test, the first mass market lateral flow device. Photo: Ceridwen / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0 FR)

COVID-19 turned a niche product into a national supply chain. In June 2020 the FALCON-C19 study began in the UK, and of 64 devices tested only four had desirable performance. English schools introduced twice-weekly lateral flow tests when they reopened on 8 March 2021, and everyone in England could test from 9 April. Makers rushed to add capacity. Bosch Australia Manufacturing Solutions ordered 144 KUKA robots for Ellume's automated lines, a sign that hand assembly would not keep pace with that demand.

A COVID-19 testing worker in a booth in Beijing prepares a throat swab, January 2022. Photo: N509FZ / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Test kit factories now and where ABB fits

Rapid tests are still a business. Abingdon Health, a UK lateral flow developer and manufacturer, reported on 13 October 2026 that revenue for the year to 30 June rose 32% to £11.3 million. Its Madison, Wisconsin site, which now includes a manufacturing hub, officially opened on 24 September 2026. Market reports forecast steady growth for lateral flow assays, with one putting the market at $13.52 billion by 2031. Forecasts are only estimates, but they show that makers still expect to build many more kits.

A Siemens Healthineers Clinitest rapid COVID-19 antigen cassette showing a result. Photo: Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

A lateral flow line has several stages. Nitrocellulose membranes carry the test and control lines, and strips are cut and fitted into plastic cassettes, like the finished cassette in the photo with its sample well and result window. In France, ATIS adapted HIV test kit machines for COVID tests, and its hardest task was scaling strip production with automatic cutting and assembly. At Senova in Germany, an OMRON line uses one robot to take the test cassette and slide it into a pouch, which is then heat sealed. Small light parts, many variants and tight quality checks suit robots well.

A finished lateral flow cassette with its sample well and result window. Photo: Secretlondon / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

I could not find a published ABB lateral flow customer, but ABB does have a close relative. IdeAtiva, in Italy's Mirandola Biomedical District, built a line to assemble oncology infusion-set components using one ABB IRB 14050 YuMi single-arm robot and three CRB 15000 GoFa cobots on a free-pallet conveyor. The team first built the whole cell in RobotStudio as a digital twin, and ABB OptiFact stores a digital record for every infusion set. A test kit line needs the same things: repeatable placement, vision checks and a record for each batch.

A collaborative ABB robot line of the kind IdeAtiva uses to assemble oncology infusion set parts in Italy. Photo: ABB

Cleanliness matters for medical consumables. The ABB IRB 1300 Clean Room robot, shown loading small black parts into trays, is built for controlled environments, so a plant making sensitive reagents or molecular cartridges could use it. In Singapore, ABB's RAVE system uses IRB 910SC SCARA robots to handle COVID-19 samples, which shows ABB robots in testing work, though not in kit assembly. For boxing finished kits, an IRB 360 FlexPicker could pick pouches and place them into cartons, as ABB shows it doing with small items. These are possibilities, not confirmed installations.

An ABB IRB 1300 Clean Room robot loading small parts into black trays. Photo: ABB

What comes next for diagnostic kit lines

Test kits are moving toward more variety and more data. Market reports point to multiplex panels that detect several targets on one strip, and to molecular tests for use outside the lab. QuantuMDx scaled a molecular point-of-care cassette with a line that includes automated optical inspection. More variants mean shorter runs and frequent changeovers, which favour cobots such as GoFa and YuMi with easy programming through Wizard. A cell can be simulated in RobotStudio before it is built, and a related case is covered in our post on medical device assembly.

ABB IRB 360 FlexPicker robots packing small items at high speed. Photo: ABB

Cost, changeovers and regulation remain open. Fixed machines built for one product are hard to reuse when the product changes, while flexible robot cells can be reprogrammed. Quality rules for medical products are strict, and traceability takes real effort to build. Skilled people are needed to validate a line before it ships, and that skill is scarce in many factories. Buyers at home can protect themselves by choosing tests that carry the approvals their country asks for and reading the instructions, since even a good strip depends on a careful sample.

ABB cobots working along the IdeAtiva conveyor line for medical assembly. Photo: ABB

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