Application and Development of Biscuit Cartoning Machine in the Food Industry

Application and Development of Biscuit Cartoning Machine in the Food Industry

In the food industry, a biscuit cartoning machine serves as an automated solution—replacing manual labor in the final packaging stage. It handles the entire process for products like individual pillow-packed biscuits, multi-pack gift sets, or tray-packed biscuits: automatically erecting cartons, counting and organizing products, inserting them into cartons, sealing the cartons, applying labels or codes, and subsequently preparing them for case packing and palletizing. Typically, these machines do not operate in isolation; rather, they are integrated into a continuous production line that encompasses cooling, pillow-packaging, product organizing, tray loading, cartoning, check-weighing, coding, and case packing.

I. Typical Applications in the Food/Biscuit Industry

1) Shortbread/hard biscuits, cookies, wafers, and sandwich biscuits: Because these products are fragile, the equipment utilizes pusher mechanisms or soft-grip end-effectors to gently push or place them, thereby reducing breakage rates.
2) Multi-pack biscuit gift sets: After exiting the pillow-packaging stage, the equipment automatically counts, groups, and organizes the packs, places them into trays, and inserts them into cartons (e.g., 6 or 12 packs per carton).
3) Premium gift boxes/specialty product packaging: The system can incorporate dividers, instruction leaflets, desiccant packets, or QR-code inserts, often paired with a vision system to ensure no items are missing.
4) E-commerce/retail multi-specification requirements: A single machine can store multiple product recipes, allowing for "one-touch" switching between different carton types or specifications—ideal for small-batch, high-SKU production environments.
5) Export-oriented or large-scale industrial lines: Constructed from 304/316L stainless steel, these machines are designed for easy disassembly and cleaning, with no sanitary "dead zones." They can also integrate with MES/ERP systems to enable batch traceability.

II. Addressing Traditional Pain Points

1) Manual cartoning: Characterized by slow speeds, inconsistent sealing, risks of missing or incorrect items, potential product contamination from human contact, and ongoing challenges in recruiting labor.
2) Inability to meet production capacity demands during peak seasons, coupled with a decline in quality during night shifts.
3) Excessive waste of paperboard, inconsistent adhesive application, non-uniform appearance of gift boxes, and a high volume of customer complaints.
4) Long changeover times (up to one hour), which discourages the acceptance of smaller orders. Automatic cartoning machines typically achieve an output of 2,000–5,000 cartons per hour, with changeover times ranging from 3 to 15 minutes. They reduce defect rates—previously in the range of several percent—to just 0.2%–0.5%, while eliminating the need for 3–6 packaging operators per line.

III. Current Technological Trends

1) Flexibility: Utilizing PLC, servo systems, and recipe libraries, these lines can handle various products—such as biscuits, pastries, confectionery, or frozen foods—on a single shared line. They can store over 200 carton-specification profiles, allowing for product changeovers without stopping the production line.
2) Vision Systems & Robotics: Industrial cameras identify the positions of products (e.g., biscuits) or trays, while delta robots or soft-gripper end-effectors perform dynamic picking. This enables the handling of irregularly shaped or fragile items, even when the incoming product flow is inconsistent.
3) Enhanced Food Hygiene: Features include food-grade stainless steel construction, quick-disassembly designs, positive-pressure dust removal, UV/ion-air treatment, and precise adhesive application control—all in compliance with HACCP/ISO 22000 standards.
4) Digitalization: Real-time data—including OEE, production output, defect counts, adhesive consumption, and reasons for downtime—is uploaded to the cloud, supporting remote operations, maintenance, and predictive maintenance.
5) Green Packaging: Systems are compatible with thin-cardboard cartons, recycled paper, biodegradable films, and plastic-free window designs, while also minimizing hot-melt adhesive usage—meeting the ESG requirements of major retailers and export markets.
6) AI Quality Inspection: Automated detection of issues such as missing or extra items, broken biscuit corners, misaligned seals, or blurred batch codes, with OCR and vision-based systems triggering the automatic rejection of defective units.

IV. Market Landscape and Selection Considerations

1) Large-Scale Bakery/Biscuit Manufacturers: Typically implement high-speed, fully integrated lines—connecting flow wrapping, product handling, cartoning, and case packing—with a strong focus on operational stability and data traceability.
2) Small to Medium-Sized Food Producers: Often begin with semi-automatic or compact, standalone machines—focusing automation specifically on the "product counting and cartoning" stage—with a typical return on investment (ROI) period of 1–3 years. 3) For mid-to-high-end equipment, the core components remain servo systems, machine vision, soft grippers, and control systems. While domestic equipment is well-suited for the mid-range market, ultra-high-speed applications and complex gift-box packaging still rely on imports or top-tier domestic manufacturers.
4) Note that biscuit packaging and "bagging/flow-wrapping" are distinct processes: bagging involves sealing individual units, whereas cartoning (boxing) is a downstream process—ensure you distinguish between the two when selecting equipment.

V. Future Trends

1) Evolution from standalone "automatic cartoning" to integrated lines covering product orientation, tray loading, cartoning, checkweighing, case packing, and palletizing.
2) Transition from manual machine adjustment to recipe-based recall and self-learning changeovers.
3) Shift from simple error prevention to full traceability for every box, zero-defect visual quality, and optimized packaging material consumption.
4) Small-scale facilities may opt for modular, phased upgrades, while large-scale operations are moving toward "lights-out" (fully automated) downstream packaging.

If you are looking to purchase equipment or develop a production line solution, I can provide a tailored selection list based on your specific requirements—such as daily output (in tens of thousands of bags), product varieties, packaging format (gift boxes vs. bulk retail), and budget. This includes recommendations for flow-wrappers, product orientation systems, cartoning machines, sealing methods, and inspection/vision systems. At Wenzhou Lin'er Machinery Co., Ltd., we are ready to provide the ideal packaging solution for your needs.