Snack Food Packaging Robot: Chips and ABB Robots

A bag of chips is light, slippery and full of air, and the chips inside break if it is squeezed. That makes the snack food packaging robot a tricky machine to build. It has to pick soft pillow bags, bars and cracker packs off a fast belt and stand them neatly in cases without crushing anything. This post follows snack packing from hand folded paper bags in the 1920s to the form fill seal machine and the first delta robots, then looks at today's robotic case packers, including ABB's IRB 360 FlexPicker, and at the problems still open.

A pack of Walkers salt and vinegar crisps, the pillow bag snack robots have to handle gently. Photo: Gerolsteiner91 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.5)

How chips and crackers went from barrels to sealed bags

Early chips were often sold in bulk and went stale once opened. Two firms changed that in the 1920s. In London, Frank Smith's Smiths Potato Crisps, formed in 1920, packed chips in greaseproof paper bags with a twist of salt inside. In California, Laura Scudder refused to sell her chips in bulk. Her employees folded sheets of wax paper and sealed them on three sides with irons, and after the factory filled each pouch with chips and closed it, the bag was airtight. Fresh, single serve bags sold well, and Scudder grew the business across the West Coast.

Visitors in hairnets tour the line at a potato and chips factory in Vushtrri, Kosovo, 2020. Photo: Spc. Miguel Ruiz, U.S. Army National Guard via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Making bags one by one by hand could not keep up. In 1936 Walter Zwoyer, working with the Henry Heide Candy Company, patented the vertical form fill seal machine. It pulls a flat roll of printed film around a forming tube, seals the long seam, fills the tube with product, then seals and cuts across the top to finish one bag and start the next. Snack makers still use the same idea today, usually with a weigher above the machine that drops a measured portion into each bag as it is formed.

Rolls of printed snack film loaded on packaging machines at Strauss Group's salty snacks factory in Sderot. Photo: Nizzan Cohen / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

The bagging became automatic long before the boxing did. For decades workers stood at the end of the bagger, picked up bags and stood them in shipping cases by hand, while biscuit and cracker factories packed rows of packs into cartons the same way. Robots needed to be fast and light for this job. Reymond Clavel at EPFL in Switzerland patented the delta robot in 1985, and ABB launched its own delta, the IRB 340 FlexPicker, in 1998 for fast picking of small products.

ABB's second generation FlexPicker delta robot picking small packs off a conveyor. Photo: ABB

Robotic case packing for snack lines today

On a modern snack line, robots usually take over after the bagger and the checkweigher. Delta robots pick bags or bars from a belt, guided by a camera, and place them in cases or trays. Machine builders sell dedicated snack packers too: BluePrint Automation describes its Robotic Vertical Packer as packing fragile bags of chips at up to 150 bags a minute. At the end of the line, palletizing robots stack the full cases. Some plants still keep a few people at the case packer to fix jams and handle odd products.

Industrial robots packing cartons on an automatic packaging line. Photo: Tecnowey / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Snack packing will be on show this month. PACK EXPO International runs from 18 to 21 October 2026 at McCormick Place in Chicago, and Packaging World reports that ProMach will run a live line there. It joins Matrix vertical form fill seal baggers, Bartelt horizontal pouching and Quest robotic case packing and palletizing. The Matrix baggers will carry seal jaws from LAKO, which joined ProMach in 2026. The point of the demo is to show primary packaging and end of line automation working as one connected line.

A multihead weigher above an inclined vertical form fill seal bagger at Pack Expo Chicago, 2014. Photo: Jwallingford1 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

ABB's main snack tool is the IRB 360 FlexPicker, run with PickMaster vision software and conveyor tracking so it can pick products from a moving belt. In Sweden, the pastry maker Delicato installed four IRB 360 robots at its Segeltorp bakery to pick chocolate covered balls and place them in blisters, a system built by integrator Evomatic. Larger cases and pallets go to articulated arms and to the IRB 460 and IRB 660 palletizers. Our post on packaging lines and case packing covers the general setup.

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

What comes next for snack food packing

Snack makers sell more flavours, sizes and multipacks than they did a decade ago, and supermarkets ask for shelf ready trays and mixed variety cases. That means more changeovers. Variety cases are the hardest, because the robot has to pick several different bags from separate lanes and fill each case in the right mix. A robot can switch between case patterns by loading a new program and swapping a gripper, while a fixed mechanical packer may need new change parts. Engineers test new patterns in RobotStudio first, checking that the robot keeps up with the bagger before the line stops for the change.

An ABB IRB 660 palletizer stacking cartons, with cases of Dot's Pretzels beside it. Photo: ABB

Smaller producers are the next market. Kettle chip makers, granola bar startups and regional bakeries run shorter batches and often still pack cases by hand, because a full robotic cell costs too much for a few hours of work a day. Compact cobots such as GoFa CRB 15000 can work next to people without a full fence, and some could take on case packing at slower lines, though they are much slower than a delta robot. For home buyers the effect is indirect: more small brands may reach shop shelves.

An ABB GoFa cobot loading parts into a machine at a small factory. Photo: ABB

The problems are mostly physical. Chip bags are puffy and slippery, film varies from one supplier to the next, and grippers have to hold a bag without bursting it. Crumbs, salt and oil build up on machines, so robots near open product need hygienic design and regular washdown. Cost and skills matter too, and small plants may lack the floor space for a fenced cell. A plant needs staff who can retune vision and reteach a pick, and tools such as ABB's Wizard block programming help operators make small changes without a robot programmer.

Close view of snack film rolls feeding the baggers at Strauss Group in Sderot. Photo: Nizzan Cohen / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

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