Paper Cup Manufacturing: Dixie Cups to ABB Robots

How paper cup manufacturing grew from the 1907 Dixie cup to forming machines and robot packing, and where ABB arms and palletizers fit as plastic rules tighten.

INDUSTRIAL ROBOTICS

Chat With Robot

10/10/20265 min read

Paper cup manufacturing turns a reel of coated board into stacks of finished cups at high speed, and then someone or something has to count those stacks, bag them, box them and load the boxes onto pallets. This post follows the paper cup from the public health scare that produced the Dixie cup in 1907, through wax and plastic coated board and the cup forming machine, to today's plants and the European rules on single use plastics. It also looks at where ABB robots fit around the forming machines and which problems still slow automation down.

A tray of orange and white paper cups on a counter next to two water coolers and a drinks machine

Stacks of paper cups beside water coolers in an office pantry in Hong Kong. Photo: Cecilsphase / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

How the Dixie cup replaced the shared tin dipper

In the early 1900s Americans drank from shared glasses and tin dippers at school taps, water barrels and railway cars. Lawrence Luellen, a Boston inventor worried about germs spreading this way, developed a disposable paper cup in 1907 along with an ice cooled water vending machine. In August 1908 Alvin Davison, a biology professor at Lafayette College, published "Death in School Drinking Cups", and states began banning the common cup. The Lackawanna Railroad started using paper cups in 1909, and by 1917 the public glass had disappeared from American railway carriages.

Two old cream coloured paper cups printed with blue hotel crests on a grey background

Early Dixie cups from around 1910, printed for hotels. Photo: Lafayette College via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Luellen and Hugh Moore, another Bostonian, built a business around the cups and vending machines, and in 1910 they formed the Individual Drinking Cup Company of New York. The cup was first sold as the Health Kup and took the name Dixie in 1919, after a line of dolls. The company later called itself the Dixie Cup Corporation and moved to a factory in Wilson, Pennsylvania, with a water tank shaped like a giant cup on the roof. That tank came down on 30 April 2026. Dixie merged with the American Can Company in 1957.

A huge white cup shaped structure with red and blue stripes standing on a lawn under a blue sky

A giant concrete Dixie cup outside the former Lily Tulip cup plant in Riverside, California. Photo: MissionInn.Jim / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

As volumes grew, the material changed. Early cups were made waterproof with clay or wax spun into the board, and cold drink cups were sprayed with wax inside and out because condensation soaked into the paper. Polyethylene coated board replaced both. A thin layer of PE seals the board and welds the seams together when the cup is formed. Cup board today weighs 170 to 350 grams per square metre and is printed on large flexographic presses for runs of over a million cups. Forming machines then cut side walls and bottoms, wrap and seal them, and curl the rim.

A tall white cup dispenser with a column of small patterned paper cups showing at the bottom

A wall dispenser holding a stack of small Dixie cups. Photo: MichaelCousins1 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Paper cup manufacturing today and the robots around it

Demand is moving toward local plants. In September The Globe and Mail and Castanet reported that Eco Guardian, a paper cup and bowl maker in Aurora, Ontario, was seeing a surge in demand from local foodservice customers amid tariffs, and Canadian Manufacturing reported that its facility was fully operational. Eco Guardian received 1.5 million dollars from the Ontario government in March 2026. The company says the plant uses advanced automation and, at full capacity, can make 2 billion compostable and recyclable paper cups and food containers a year, with up to 40 new skilled jobs.

Two men working at a blue and grey paper cup forming machine with a white paper reel at the front

Workers running a paper cup making machine fed from a reel of cup board in India. Photo: Theni.M.Subramani / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

The forming machine is a dedicated mechanism, and robots work around it. Cups leave the machine in stacks, and each stack has to be counted, checked for crushed rims or bad seams, sleeved or bagged and packed into cases. A compact arm such as the ABB IRB 1200 or IRB 1300 can take stacks from several machines and feed them to a bagger, while a vision system rejects faulty cups before packing. No source says Eco Guardian uses ABB robots, so this describes how ABB's arms could fit into a plant like it.

A compact white ABB industrial robot arm standing on a base

The new generation ABB IRB 1200, a compact arm for machine tending and small part work. Photo: ABB

The heaviest manual job sits at the end of the line. Cases of cups are light but bulky, and a plant making billions of cups a year fills a great many pallets. ABB's IRB 460 and IRB 660 palletizers stack cases in programmed patterns, and an IRB 360 FlexPicker can pack lids or small sleeves into cartons. At the start of the process, big reels of cup board have to be moved and loaded, a job covered in our post on paper roll handling. Most of these cells are laid out and tested first in RobotStudio.

An orange ABB palletizing robot placing boxes onto a pallet

An ABB IRB 660 palletizer stacking cases at the end of a line. Photo: ABB

What comes next for paper cups in factories and homes

Plastics rules are already changing the product. The European Union's Single Use Plastics Directive of 2019 covers beverage cups that contain plastic, including paper cups with a plastic lining, and those cups must carry a marking that tells drinkers about the plastic. Board makers are answering with new barriers. In 2017 the Finnish board maker Kotkamills launched cup board that uses no wax or plastic for waterproofing, so it can go into the normal paper and board recycling stream. Each new material brings new settings for forming machines and new checks for vision systems.

A purple paper coffee cup with a white lid on a stone ledge, with a printed plastic warning label

A takeaway coffee cup carrying the EU marking that warns of plastic in the product. Photo: Henry Söderlund / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Most people meet paper cups in offices, at coffee shops and in vending machines, and for households the open question is what to do with them afterwards. Because most cups are coated with polyethylene, fibre and plastic have to be separated before recycling, and many paper mills cannot do it. Some places already ask people to sort paper cups into a separate bin. A coating that lets the cup go into the ordinary paper bin would change more for most households than anything on the factory floor.

Four blue and clear plastic bins with Japanese labels under a counter, one marked for paper cups

Sorting bins in Japan with a separate bin just for paper cups. Photo: Adrian Lim / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Factories face their own hurdles. A robot cell has to pay off by taking over tiring packing and palletizing work across whole shifts, and that is easier in a plant running billions of cups than in a small one. Cells that work next to people need guarding, or collaborative robots with speed and force limits. Plants like Eco Guardian's also need technicians who can tune forming machines, maintain robots and adjust vision checks whenever the board or coating changes, and training those people takes time.

A worker guiding an ABB GoFa collaborative robot arm by hand at a workstation

ABB's GoFa cobot is guided by hand and stops when it senses contact. Photo: ABB

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