The vision of Yakult company founder Dr. Minoru Shirota: to improve the health of people all over the world. More than 80 years of research have gone into the Japanese drink. The scientist succeeded in selecting and cultivating the lactic acid bacteria Lactobacillus casei Shirota (LcS), which was later named after him. From this he developed the fermented drink Yakult in 1935. Each bottle contains at least 6.5 billion of these lactic acid bacteria, which reach the intestine alive. The probiotic drink is produced for the European market in Almere in the Netherlands. The plant has increased its production capacity and can process 43,200 bottles per hour with the new Schubert machine.

The factory supplies 13 countries in Europe with Yakult. "We wanted to switch from film to cardboard for secondary packaging in the European market. We asked Schubert to develop a machine for this purpose," says Ronald Jacobs, Plant Manager Yakult Europe. "Together with the experts from Schubert, we developed environmentally friendly and practical packaging." The vials of Shirota bacteria are now available to Yakult customers in supermarkets in easy-to-open display cartons. At home in the fridge, the vials can be stored safely and stably in the cardboard box.

The requirements for the packaging system were varied: in addition to high output and a predefined limited space requirement, flexible format options were on the wish list. The machine also had to offer the option of inserting a leaflet for customer information between the vials in the packs. Schubert's engineers achieved maximum performance in the smallest possible space with a combination of several F2 robots, four transmodule lines and image recognition systems. The line packs 720 Yakult vials per minute. The fast format changeover supports secondary packaging in packs of six or eight.

The F2 robots place the pre-grouped formats into the erected cardboard boxes. © Schubert

The cardboard blanks are picked up from the magazine by F3 robots and placed in a horizontal position. The F2 robots take these blanks, apply adhesive to them above the gluing station, press them through the folding unit and place them directly onto a transfer module, which transports the erected cardboard boxes to the next work steps. At the same time, the transport chain takes the vials from the pre-machine to the TLM system.

"Distributing the bottles from the single-lane infeed to two lanes at a high output was a challenge," says Georg Koutsogiannis, the responsible Sales Account Manager at Schubert. A grouping chain distributes the bottles on two lanes to the two infeed screws, which transfer the products individually to two toothed belt conveyors. From there, the vials reach the pick-up areas of two F2 robots, each of which removes 48 vials from the belt and places them on a Transmodul of the second Transmodul line in the system. This transmodule transports the vials to two further F2 robots. These robots pick up 24 vials at a time, push them together to carton size and place them in the erected carton boxes on the first transmodule line.

Depending on the format, either twelve or 16 cardboard boxes are filled at the same time. If required, a leaflet is inserted between the vials before the packaging is checked for completeness and closed by the next two F2 robots. The capping robots place the cartons on a transfer module on the third line in the system. A printer marks the carton boxes with expiration dates during transportation. The sealed carton boxes are then placed five at a time in a display carton by two further F2 robots. The display cartons are also erected in the system according to the same principle as the carton boxes and transported to the filling area via a fourth transmodule line. Schubert used an integrated elevator to discharge the filled display cartons upwards. Another special feature of this packaging machine is the central glue refilling station for erecting and closing the cartons.

The line's high efficiency of 97% has significantly increased production capacity at Yakult Europe. The line also offers flexible format options for future requirements in secondary and tertiary packaging. pb

Hall 1, Stand 219