ABB Robots in Meat and Poultry Processing

Meat packing went from hand lines to robot pickers. See how ABB IRB 390 FlexPacker, IRB 660 and IRB 1200 Hygienic robots fit, and where cutting robots go next.

INDUSTRIAL ROBOTICS

Chat With Robot

9/22/20262 min read

A century ago, meat packing employed crowds of workers. In the big plants, long rows of people cut, trimmed, wrapped and canned by hand beside moving overhead chains. That "disassembly line" is often credited with inspiring Henry Ford's assembly line. The work was cold and wet, and injuries were common.

Women packing chipped beef into jars at a meat packing plant around 1910
Women packing chipped beef into jars at a meat packing plant around 1910

Packing chipped beef by hand at a US meat plant, around 1910. Photo: Bureau of Animal Industry (public domain)

Machines slowly took over the simplest steps, like slicing, grinding and vacuum packing. The handling in between stayed manual for decades. Workers laid bacon on boards and packed sausages into trays, repeating the same motion thousands of times a shift in rooms kept just above freezing.

Workers in hard hats handling bacon on a processing line
Workers in hard hats handling bacon on a processing line

Workers processing bacon at Fearman's meat plant in Ontario. Photo: Archives of Ontario (Open Government Licence – Ontario)

Picking and packing was where robots fit first. ABB's IRB 390 FlexPacker is a delta robot that carries up to 15 kg, fast enough for light packs and strong enough for heavy ones. For a Brazilian sausage maker, integrator Torfresma built a line with FlexPackers doing the picking and two ABB IRB 660s palletizing the finished cases.

ABB IRB 390 FlexPacker delta robot picking packs of sausages from a conveyor
ABB IRB 390 FlexPacker delta robot picking packs of sausages from a conveyor

An ABB IRB 390 FlexPacker picking sausage packs on a Torfresma line in Brazil. Photo: ABB

Cutting is harder, because every carcass is different and a skilled butcher reads bone and fat as they go. Investment is still rising, though. A PMMI report published at the end of August puts the US market for packaging and processing robots at more than $440 million in 2025, growing to about $800 million by 2031, and 72% of the users it surveyed already run robots.

Butcher cutting a pork loin by hand on a wooden block
Butcher cutting a pork loin by hand on a wooden block

A butcher cutting pork at Borough Market, London. Cuts like this are still hard to automate. Photo: Adrian Snood / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Hygiene decides which robots can go near raw meat. ABB's IRB 1200 Hygienic is rated IP69K, so it survives high-pressure washdown. ABB's PickMaster software uses cameras to guide each FlexPacker pick when products land at random on the belt.

ABB IRB 390 FlexPacker robots working inside a stainless steel packing cell
ABB IRB 390 FlexPacker robots working inside a stainless steel packing cell

ABB IRB 390 FlexPacker robots in a meat packing cell. Photo: ABB

The next step is robots that learn cuts from people. ABB has described an AI-enabled robot that trains beside an experienced meat worker and learns the movements needed to process a carcass. Shoppers will mostly notice the change on the shelf, in more even portions and more pre-packed meal kits, long before any robot shows up in a home kitchen.

Two people watching an ABB robot at work in a food production cell
Two people watching an ABB robot at work in a food production cell

People watching an ABB robot at work. Photo: ABB

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