TechMagic, a Japanese robotics startup, has launched its first project under the “Future Food Factory Consortium“, which it established alongside five food manufacturers. The project, titled “Raw Material Weighing Automation Project“, has now commenced.
The “Future Food Factory Consortium” was formed in July last year based on the idea that while collaboration among competing food manufacturers can be challenging, they can work together in non-competitive areas through open innovation. Participating companies include Kagome, Kewpie, Nagatanien, Nichirei Foods, and Nisshin Seifun Group, all of whom aim to address common challenges in the food industry.
The consortium identified shared challenges among its members and focused on upstream processes, such as raw material receiving and weighing, where automation has yet to advance significantly. While downstream processes, such as transportation, packaging, inventory management systems, and palletizing (stacking packaged products onto pallets), have seen a degree of automation, upstream processes like unpacking and weighing still rely heavily on manual labor.
Automation has been slow to progress in raw material weighing and feeding processes due to the need for flexible handling of diverse ingredients, each requiring different operations per product. This has made it difficult to justify automation investments from a cost-effectiveness perspective.
To tackle this issue, the consortium launched the “Raw Material Weighing Automation Project” as its first initiative. Leveraging the expertise of participating companies, the project aims to develop robotic solutions that automate the processes from raw material receiving to weighing and feeding.
By collaborating with TechMagic, which specializes in cooking and industrial robots, the five food manufacturers aim to distribute development costs, standardize solutions, share specialized knowledge and expertise, and accelerate market introduction.
Founded in 2018, TechMagic has developed robotic products to enhance the efficiency of food factories, including the cooking robot “I-Robo2” and the prepared food plating robot “M-Robo”.
In June 2022, TechMagic introduced the world’s first automatic pasta cooking robot, “P-Robo”, which was deployed at “Ebino Spaghetti,” a restaurant operated by Pronto Corporation in Tokyo’s Marunouchi Building. In February 2023, TechMagic began co-developing a french fry cooking robot with KFC Japan. Next month, at the 53rd International Hotel and Restaurant Show, TechMagic plans to unveil the “F-Robo”, an automated french fry cooking robot, for the first time.
By addressing common challenges in food factories through cross-company collaboration and robotic technology, this project aims to contribute to the development of a sustainable food infrastructure. The consortium’s efforts are expected to pave the way for the future of food production.
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