Supplement Gummy Packing: ABB Robots on the Line

Supplement gummy packing is an odd job for a robot. The product is soft and sticky, it ships in bottles, pouches and single-serve sachets, and shoppers spend billions of dollars on it every year. This post follows the path from the first vitamin discoveries to the chewy gummy on the pharmacy shelf. It covers how gummies are counted, filled and boxed today, where ABB robots such as the IRB 360 FlexPicker, the IRB 1200 Hygienic and the IRB 660 could fit on those lines, and which problems still stand between a packing line and a lights-out factory.

Gummy vitamins in red and orange, the chewy format now common in supplements. Photo: Suzanne Schroeter / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

How vitamins went from lab discovery to pill bottle

Vitamins began as a puzzle about disease. In 1897 Christiaan Eijkman found that unpolished rice protected chickens from a condition like beriberi, and in 1898 Frederick Hopkins argued that foods carry small "accessory factors" the body needs. In 1912 Casimir Funk isolated a similar substance in London and named it "vitamine", from "vital" and "amine". Jack Drummond proposed dropping the final "e" in 1920. Eijkman and Hopkins shared the 1929 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work, which turned a scattered set of observations into a field with its own name.

Casimir Funk, who coined the word vitamine in 1912, at work in his New York laboratory in 1953. Photo: The Associated Press via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Once the chemistry was known, companies sold it. Commercial tablets of yeast-extract vitamin B complex and semi-synthetic vitamin C became available in 1935, and by the 1950s supplements, multivitamins among them, were being mass produced and marketed to ordinary households. They came as tablets, capsules and oils. The photo shows a London bottle of Super-D oil capsules from the 1940s. Every bottle like this had to be filled, capped, labelled and boxed, and for decades that meant a mix of simple machines and people at the end of the line.

A bottle of Super-D oil capsules sold in London in the 1940s, an early vitamin D supplement. Photo: Wellcome Collection via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

Gummies came from candy, not from medicine. Hans Riegel started his company in Germany in the 1920s, later named Haribo, and helped popularise fruit-flavoured gelatin candy. Jelly Belly launched its first gummy bear in 1981. Vitamins followed. Flintstones chewable vitamins arrived in 1968 as character shapes for children, and Hero Nutritionals, founded in 1995, told Business Insider it made America's first gummy vitamin. Around 2012 marketers began aiming gummies at adults, and a children's format became a mainstream way for grown-ups to take a daily supplement.

Gummy bears, the candy format that later carried vitamins. Photo: Thomas Rosenau / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.5)

Gummy supplements today and the robots on the line

The market is large and under new scrutiny. SPINS data cited by NutraIngredients put US supplement gummy sales above $4.88 billion for the 52 weeks to 6 September 2026. In October 2026 scientists at the FDA's Office of Dietary Supplement Programs published a perspective in the Journal of Dietary Supplements on gummy formulation, manufacturing and testing. An FDA spokesperson said gummies should not be treated simply as candy. NOW Foods tested 25 vitamin C gummies sold on Amazon in August 2026, and only 13 met their label claims, which shows how much the finished product matters.

Pale oval vitamin C supplement tablets, a product type now tested against label claims. Photo: Mx. Granger / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

Packing is where robots come in once the gummies are made. A typical line drops counted gummies into bottles or pouches, seals them, adds labels, then loads cartons and pallets. Picking small, soft items off a moving belt and placing them in trays or cartons suits a delta robot such as the ABB IRB 360 FlexPicker, which ABB shows packing small items at high speed. It follows the belt using vision and software such as PickMaster. I could not find a published ABB gummy customer, so this is a fit based on how the FlexPicker already handles similar light products.

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

Sticky gummies and sugar dust create a hygiene problem. The ABB IRB 1200 Hygienic is a compact six-axis arm built for food handling and washdown, and ABB demonstrates it picking bananas. A cell like that could load tubs, feed pouches into machines or tend a bottle capper. That is a possibility, not a confirmed gummy installation. Pharma and confectionery plants also run blister and capsule work, which we cover in our posts on blister packing robots and coffee capsule packing.

An ABB IRB 1200 Hygienic robot picking bananas, a food handling demo. Photo: ABB

The end of the line is heavy and repetitive. Filled bottles go into cartons, cartons into cases and cases onto pallets. ABB's IRB 660 and IRB 460 palletizers are built for that stacking, and the photo shows an IRB 660 loading boxed product at the end of a line. Supplement brands often run many flavours and pack sizes through one plant, so a palletizing cell has to switch patterns quickly. Programs like this are usually built and tested first in RobotStudio before anyone touches the factory floor.

An ABB IRB 660 palletizing robot stacking boxed products at the end of a line. Photo: ABB

What comes next for gummy packing lines

Short runs are the next pressure. Brands now release organic, vegan and prenatal gummies, each with its own formula and label, and that favours flexible cells over fixed machines. Smaller ABB robots such as the YuMi, which assembles small parts beside lab staff, and the GoFa cobot could take on kitting variety packs, sampling or quality checks next to people. SafeMove and Wizard easy programming would lower the skill needed to change a job. These uses are plausible for ABB's existing robots, not announced products or customer projects.

ABB YuMi assembling small parts beside a lab worker. Photo: ABB

Several problems remain. Gummies stick to grippers and to each other, humidity changes how they behave, and the FDA perspective names water activity and testing difficulty as real manufacturing issues. As regulators and competitors test products against their labels, inspection and traceability will count for more on the packing line. Shoppers at home can check for third-party testing on the label. For factories, cost and integration skills decide how soon a packing cell moves from pilot to routine, and a bottle like this one still has to be counted, sealed and checked.

A bottle of vitamin pills beside its contents, the basic unit of supplement packing. Photo: Svtk44 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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