What happens when family businesses with similar values work together to bring an exceptional project to life? The impressive results can now be seen at an American bakery manufacturer, located in Versailles, Kentucky (USA). A Schubert packaging line has been in operation there since spring 2024, taking the company a big step into the future. The redundant machine concept reduces waste, relieves employees of monotonous work and is already equipped for the eventual use of recyclable packaging materials.

Tradition, family, responsibility and respect these are the values that packaging machine manufacturer Schubert stands for, as does American bakery manufacturer “More Than A Bakery”, a spin-off of the long-established Richmond Baking company. The family business located in Versailles, Kentucky, has more than 170 years of baking history. A variety of small baked goods such as biscuits and crackers are produced there every day, for global players as well as small regional customers. Packaging the fragile products into flow-wrap bags is a challenge. One that calls for flexibility, speed and very meticulous handling. Until now, the company had been working with flow-wrapping machines where the biscuits had to be fed manually. CEO Bill Quigg was looking for a new packaging solution that would combine all processing requirements in a fully automated line and he came across Schubert.

On the one hand, the goal was to free the staff from the monotonous work at the machine infeed and, on the other, to significantly reduce production losses in the packaging process itself. “More Than A Bakery” was also looking to increase the line's output in the future to leverage the full capacity of the oven. Another important factor on the company’s wish list was to be able to switch from the previously used cold-sealing film to different heat-sealing films. This will enable the manufacturer to offer its customers recyclable flow-wrap packaging made from monofilms or paper-based films in the future.

Schubert combined these customer requirements in a redundant machine concept based on the Schubert Flowpacker. The unique feature of the Flowpacker is that the Flowmodul flow-wrapping unit is integrated directly into the line to save space as feeding is not carried out conventionally via belts but by pick & place robots. This means that a continuously controlled process is created whereby the fragile products are checked for quality using Schubert image processing, removed from the belt extremely gently by the robots, placed into the flow-wrapping unit chain and then packaged. A flexible sealing unit ensures a perfectly matched sealing process for the respective flow-wrapping film.

For “More Than A Bakery”, Schubert customised its proven system components into a high-performance modular line with four Flowmoduls and 26 F4 robots. The line is designed in such a way that even if one of the flow-wrapping units fails, it can still achieve its full output of more than 1,700 products per minute. As a result, all products fresh from the oven can still be packaged without any product loss or waste. Stefan Hoffmann, Sales Account Manager at Schubert North America, explains the benefits of the robot-assisted packaging technology: “With this fully automated solution, we are helping our customer achieve much higher production performance and reliability than before while significantly reducing waste. This not only makes the bakery manufacturer more efficient throughout the entire production process, it also allows the company to benefit from lower costs in the long term while increasing its sustainability.

The system itself consists of two Flowpackers connected in series in a line, each of which is symmetrically mirrored. This means that two Flowmoduls work on both sides of the product belt per machine section. The ready-baked biscuits are fed into the machine on the wide product belt and checked for completeness by the vision system using an incident light scanner. In the front section of the machine, six pick & place robots load the chain of their associated flow-wrapping unit using the double-pick method; in the rear section, there are seven robots each. The biscuits are then packaged in cold-seal film in stacks of two or three.

The bakery manufacturer currently uses four formats, but many more are possible. And this is where Schubert’s technological expertise and innovative strength come into play: The sealing units in the Flowpacker are so flexible that “More Than A Bakery” can easily switch from the cold-sealing process to the heat-sealing process. The Schubert experts have already equipped all Flowmoduls with a flying cross-sealing unit for heat sealing. With cold sealing, the sealing unit remains fixed, whereas with heat sealing it moves along the chain and back again so that the sealing time always remains constant in spite of speed fluctuations. These are ideal conditions for working with heat-sealing films, sensitive monofilms or paper-based films reliably and without damage. All that remains is to replace the longitudinal sealing unit and equip it with an ultrasonic sealing unit. Stefan Hoffmann explains: “If the trend towards recyclable films continues to grow, and we assume it will, ‘More Than A Bakery’ is already equipped to meet the requirements of its customers with Schubert’s flexible sealing technology and can switch to more environmentally friendly packaging solutions in the shortest possible time.”

The required increase in output has already been prepared in the line with additional, still empty machine frames, which only need to be equipped with robots and scanners from Schubert’s modular system, as required. The packaging speed can then be increased so that the system can even cope with the oven’s maximum output of 2,600 products. And yes, even higher output requirements can be achieved with a third Flowpacker.

One of the reasons why Bill Quigg and his wife Felicia, Vice President of “More Than A Bakery”, opted for a Schubert machine was that they would be working with another family-run business. Schubert was even able to fulfil the very unique request of having an unusual color scheme for the machine each frame front has a different color. The Quigg family took advantage of the opportunity to attend the factory approval in Crailsheim in person. Stefan Hoffmann is delighted with the successful project completion: “We aim to make our customers a little more future-proof with every one of our lines. Together with ‘More Than A Bakery’, we have achieved this in every respect.”