Automation in the Bakery with the Van Wees Waalwijk Robot

Smart technologies help food producers operate more sustainably. They also offer a solution to the growing labor shortage. You can leave the rest of that paragraph as is. AgriFood Capital promotes initiatives to accelerate research into and the application of data, ICT, and technology throughout the entire chain, from farm to table. Through HIGHFIVE, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) receive support for their digital innovation projects in the form of grants, coaching, and/or training. This program focuses primarily on companies in Brabant.

Andries van der Werf, director of Van Wees Waalwijk, explains, "The role of the program is that, through this program, we can also give this solution a bigger spinoff."

Within HIGHFIVE, Van Wees Waalwijk and the Belgian Mariën Meesterbakkers are working together on the further automation of a bakery in Balen. Both companies know each other from an earlier European project (S3FOOD) in which Van Wees Waalwijk developed the first custom-made mobile cobot for the bakery. The current cooperation focuses on expanding the deployment possibilities of this cobot, also called Tweety because of its yellow color. Thanks to this Brabant-based technology, bakery employees can now bake and process bread with the help of a robot, making work lighter and requiring fewer hands.

In the Netherlands, the European HIGHFIVE project is being implemented under the banner of Next Tech Food Factories. This program office of AgriFood Capital and Brainport Development promotes the application of smart technologies in the food processing industry. Advanced high-tech systems help food processors to operate more efficiently and sustainably, with a focus on quality and food safety.

You can read more about our work for the food industry at: https://vanweeswaalwijk.nl/branch/voedingsmiddelenindustrie/