How Cobots Can Benefit Pet Food Plants at the End of Line

Can cobots for pet food plants fill the end-of-line gaps?

In most plants, the strongest case for cobots for pet food plants sits at the end of the line. Case erecting, bag loading, case sealing and palletizing are repetitive, close to the product, and hard to staff when the labor pool is thin. A collaborative robot arm can take over the hand-paced part of those stations while your people handle the exceptions and the quality checks.

A cobot does not replace a whole line. It fills the station that keeps going unstaffed, usually the one where a missing person slows the entire packaging run. That is why the end of the line, and not the mixer or the extruder, is where most operators begin.

This page covers the problem at these plants, the main benefits, how a cobot works day to day, which areas it covers, how it works with a smaller team, what drives the savings, what it cannot do, and how to get started with a free site assessment.

What problem do pet food plants face at the end of the line today?

Pet food plants have been short of workers for years. A pet food trade publication noted that the sector has felt labor pains for the past five years and likely longer, with the pandemic adding to the strain. An equipment specialist quoted in the same trade press put it plainly: no pet food plant runs as efficiently as it would like, because the workforce shortage is real.

The end of the line is where the strain shows first. Bags come off the filler at the pace the line sets, and someone has to erect the cases, load the bags, seal the cases and build the pallets at that same speed. According to a pet food trade publication quoting a packaging equipment specialist, some operations run at 30 bags a minute and others as high as 120 bags a minute, depending on bag size. A short-staffed station at those speeds either slows the whole run or builds a backlog.

Adding people for a surge is not a dependable answer. A packaging executive quoted in the same trade press said that adding staff for a surge is just not a practical strategy in the present job environment. The scale of the issue is wide, too, as the next figure shows.

What are the main benefits for a packing station?

The first benefit is coverage. A cobot can hold a station's pace through a shift when a person cannot be found for it. Vendor-reported analysis of more than 600 automation projects, published by a palletizing automation provider, found that 84% of palletizing projects aim to reduce the number of operators. The same analysis reports an average 71% reduction in operator labor for the palletizing process and an average throughput rise of about 16%. These are vendor figures, so read them as direction, not a guarantee.

The second benefit is consistency. In a packaging trade publication survey, labor shortages and rising costs were driving 65% of consumer packaged goods companies to adopt automation and robotics in packaging operations. The same survey found the primary automation targets were end-of-line palletizing at 39%, secondary packaging at 33%, and primary packaging at 25%.

The third benefit is fewer lost weeks. A packaging equipment vendor's case study on pet food packaging reported that training a new operator on the manual packing work took two to three weeks before the operator reached acceptable productivity. A station that depends less on each new hire loses less pace after every hire, and the crew spends its time on quality instead of catching up.

How does a cobot work the station day to day?

A cobot at a packing station runs programmed motions guided by sensors. It picks up flat case blanks, forms them, and places filled bags into the case in a pattern the team sets during commissioning. It then moves the sealed case to the outfeed or hands it to the palletizing step, depending on how the line is laid out.

The operator's role changes, but it does not disappear. A pet food maker's case study described a four-person packing crew moving to a single operator, with the machine handling the heavy lifting of erecting, loading and sealing. That left the operator free to monitor multiple machines and manage logistics. In practice, the person at a cobot cell watches the work, clears jams, refills case blanks and tape, checks seal quality, and handles any case the cell flags.

Changeovers are the part to plan for. When bag size or case size changes, the arm needs new grip settings and a checked path. Plants that map these changes before go-live tend to find the handoff smooth, and changeover time belongs in the start-up plan from the first day.

Which areas of a pet food plant does a cobot cover?

A cobot works best where the motion repeats and the space stays fixed. In a pet food plant, that usually means the end of the line, from the case magazine to the pallet. The six zones below show where the work tends to sit. Your layout, case sizes and palletizing pattern decide which zones come first.

Start with one station. Most plants prove the method on one packing or case-loading cell before adding a second, which keeps the rest of the line running during integration and testing.

How does a cobot work alongside a smaller team?

A cobot is not a replacement for the whole crew. It is a teammate that takes the repetitive station while the team keeps the judgment work. In the vendor case study on pet food packaging, the crew went from six to eight operators per shift down to one or two supervisors. That is a large change, and it depends on how the line was built and how well the team was trained. Plan for at least one trained operator on every shift that runs the cell.

Your staff keep the work that needs a person. That includes checking seal quality on the first cases of a run, handling damaged bags, watching for product on the floor, moving pallets to staging and keeping the cell clean. People also decide when to stop the cell, which matters for food safety and for the quality checks the plant already runs. The arm handles the motion, and the team handles the decisions.

What drives the savings, and what do the labor numbers say?

Savings come from hours that were being lost, not from a single promised figure. The first driver is the station that goes unstaffed. The second is overtime, or slowing the filler to keep pace with a short crew. The third is the training time each new hire needs before reaching pace. Each of these can be measured in your own shift logs before the cell goes in, and that baseline should anchor the quote.

The national labor pool for this work is shrinking. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports 555,500 hand packers and packagers employed in 2025, with a projection of 528,000 in 2035. The BLS also notes that packers and packagers have fewer manual tasks as technology in warehouses and packaging facilities continues to evolve. A May 2023 BLS national estimate lists a different employment figure for the same occupation, so the years should be read separately.

A plant that can staff a station with a smaller team, rather than hire to the peak, has a steadier path to output. An automation specialist quoted in a trade publication made a useful point here: the ROI calculation often needs to include lost opportunities or lost time caused by understaffed operations, not only headcount.

What can a cobot not do?

A cobot is not a fix for every station. It does not replace the filler, the upstream mixing, or the bag line itself. It does not decide whether a batch passes quality, and it does not clear a fault on its own. Its payload, reach and speed come from the model and the cell design, and the site assessment checks those limits against your cases and pallets.

It also needs setup and a trained lead. Mixed case sizes, heavy loads past the arm's rated payload, and layouts with tight clearances can push a job out of scope. A cobot shifts the work of a station, which means someone still owns the schedule, the maintenance checks and the changeover plan.

How do we get started with a cobot at our plant?

Start with a free site assessment. Service Robot Co. works as a commercial robot integrator. We pick the right robot for the site, lease it through financing, deploy and integrate it, train your staff, and service it nationwide. The assessment maps the end-of-line area, your bag and case sizes, the pallet pattern and the shift schedule, then shows where a cobot fits.

After the assessment, the quote sets out the lease, the deployment and integration plan, training for each shift, and service coverage. The payment comes in the quote, after the site has been measured. Deployment is staged so the line keeps running while the cell is built, and go-live support stays on site through the first production runs.