A praline packaging line in Poland
Chocolate fans are never disappointed with Toms. The Danish confectionery manufacturer has made a name for itself with its imaginative praline creations. A unique assortment of fine specialities gives connoisseurs a selection of 24 different pralines per tray. Since 2024, a chocolate packaging line from Schubert has been helping Toms employees in Poland fill the trays to perfection.
A box of ‘Anthon Berg’ pralines leaves nothing to be desired: wrapped and filled chocolates nestled closely together along with unwrapped varieties with crunchy toppings. The sweet temptations are only one facet of Toms’ extensive portfolio. The company, based in Denmark, produces chocolate, liquorice and wine gums, delighting customers around the world with a non-stop stream of new creations – and it has been doing so for a century. In 1924, pharmacists Hans Trojel and Victor Hans Meyer laid the foundation for what would eventually become the largest Danish confectionery manufacturer. Its production is in full swing: chocolate and confectionery production yields 40,000 tonnes annually.
Toms excels not only thanks to the variety of its products, textures and flavours. Throughout its long history, the company has made a name for itself with eye-catching packaging that has consistently delighted consumers with new designs. Streamlined outer packaging for chocolate, including the nationally recognised ‘Skildpadde’ (Danish for turtle), put an end to the old-fashioned, material-heavy versions – with a touch of humour. The clear design language that made such an impression in stores was due in no small part to Victor B. Strand. This visionary marketing expert took over Toms in 1942 and his innovations ushered in a new era for the confectionery maker.
A diverse assortment to tickle the tastebuds
Today’s confectionery creations reflect the innovative spirit of the time. The ‘Anthon Berg’ praline assortment, for example, delights both the palate and the eye. The pralines are presented in trays that hold 24 of the delicious chocolate treats, showcasing them beautifully for the consumer. Toms works with 14 different tray sizes, which employees at the Polish production site place by hand into the transport chain. They take the chocolates from racks and place them on product feed conveyors. Employees also manually load the subsequent sales boxes with the assorted filled trays. Toms can create up to 18 different variations with the 24 chocolates.
The use of so many trays and at times narrow cavities calls for the utmost precision. If a tray is incorrectly positioned, a praline may end up on a ledge instead of inside the cavity. This can damage the chocolates and lead to waste – which is unfortunate for the entire production process, where Toms strives for consistently high throughput. It came as no surprise that Toms was looking for a reliable tray loading solution that would work with absolute precision, even with a large variety of products. The flexibility of the packaging line was equally important. Because the company works with 14 tray sizes, the picker robots’ tools had to be capable of being changed without incurring any time delays.
Image processing times two
“For pick-and-place technology, it made sense to enquire with Schubert first,” reports Dominik Jakubiak, project engineer at Toms. “Especially as we had already successfully completed a similar project with Schubert. We represented another company on the Polish market.” The primary focus for the project managers at Toms was a praline packaging line that would enable the orientation control of the trays at the infeed and check the packaging for completeness at the outfeed.
Schubert made a name for itself 50 years ago with packaging lines for pralines. “The German company is considered the inventor of praline packaging lines and picker lines,” points out Adam Cichuta, project engineer as well. The Crailsheim-based company quickly came up with a solution. The machine manufacturer offers a range of state-of-the-art scanners for packaging lines, from 2D incident light scanners for colour and surface inspection to 3D scanners for the precise detection of height, shape and colour. A 2D scanner proved to be the right choice for Toms. It reliably detects the colour and shape of the various chocolates, thereby checking their quality. Defective chocolate creations are not picked up by the pick & place robots and never reach the trade.
With six flexible robots and six 2D scanners, the packaging line places up to 529 chocolates per minute into trays that are fed in manually. The robots only load correctly positioned trays to prevent damaged products and, using a highly efficient system, incorrectly oriented trays are immediately sorted out. Rejected trays pass a light barrier and this triggers a corresponding signal to the operating personnel, who remove the trays from the process.
Trays are under close scrutiny at Toms, with each tray being checked by a separate camera for correct positioning at the infeed and later for completeness at the outfeed. If chocolates are missing or defective, the cutting-edge packaging line gently ejects the affected trays. To accomplish this, the conveyor belt tilts down briefly and feeds the trays to a buffer belt. There, the operating personnel can remove the flat packaging materials or refill them as needed. The trays and their sweet contents then return to the process.
Top performance thanks to a cutting-edge packaging line
What takes place between the infeed and outfeed demonstrates Schubert’s packaging line expertise at its best. The line, delivered in July 2024, fully leverages the company’s strengths in pick & place with six agile four-axis robots and the corresponding vision system – as well as a sophisticated solution for feeding and separating the chocolates. Each product feed conveyor belt has a so-called spreading rake to separate the chocolates. The rakes are, so to speak, the image processing system’s right hand. Scanners can only accurately detect individual products that can be clearly identified as such. The chocolates, which are placed on the conveyor belts manually, therefore have to be spaced at minimum distances; the spreading rakes ensure that this is the case.
Behind the easy-to-clean devices, the work involves nothing but picking, picking and more picking. Each F4 robot quickly picks up both wrapped and unwrapped chocolates from two feeding channels and places them precisely into the designated tray cavities. The robots detect the rotational position of the products in fractions of a second and place them precisely where they belong. “Robots offer a decisive advantage. They can be equipped with quick-change suction and gripper tools, enabling them to pick up and set down different chocolates quickly, reliably and, above all, gently – more precisely than any human,” says Raphael Paczulla, Project Manager at Schubert.
Tool changing at its easiest
The tools are designed so that two different types of pralines can be picked up with a single one. As a result, Toms rarely has to change the tools. If there is no way around it, line operators can switch to another suitable tool within a few minutes. “Together with Toms, we looked at the chocolates, tested different picking processes and determined which product types we could pick together,” reports Lukas Hug, Sales Representative at Schubert. “The design engineers from Crailsheim know from experience which tools they can use for which application – and were able to quickly find exactly the right ones for Toms.” The result for the chocolate manufacturer is a thoroughly tried & tested packaging line.
However, another Schubert innovation plays into the robots’ hands as well. The chain conveyor is equipped with special finger-like grippers that guide the trays through the packaging line from below, via the cavities. This ensures that the trays are held firmly throughout – an important prerequisite for precisely positioning the chocolates. After all, the robots don’t have much leeway: the narrow cavities only allow for minimal tolerances. This makes it all the more important that the trays are firmly in place during loading.
With this much innovation, an expert introduction is a must: Schubert’s service technicians trained the operating personnel on site – in the national language, of course. “Thanks to a predefined training plan and Schubert’s expertise, the team was able to operate the packaging line quickly, efficiently and professionally,” says Adam Cichuta. Since mid-October 2024, Toms has been successfully packaging its exquisite pralines using Schubert robots. “This is exactly what we were aiming for: lean production, minimal changeover and no damage to the pralines,’ he sums up. All the chocolates have their place in the premium box – and sweet-tooths can indulge to their heart’s content.
