Agile, pipe-less, flexible and fast 700kg batch manufacturing.
Project Souper Green
A £2 million project to transform energy consumption in soup and sauce manufacturing with an APRIL™ Robotics Cooking Cell in partnership with Solina and supported by Marks and Spencer PLC.
Supported by grant funding from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero’s Industrial Energy Efficiency Accelerator (IEEA) programme.
The patented novel approach uses robots to move processing assets and materials rather than using inflexible hard-wired piping and static equipment. In addition, the robots also perform processing functions such as weighing, transporting, pouring and storage.
The flexibility of APRIL is driven by the fact that the processing is programmable rather than "hardcoded”.
GB Patent Number 2543033.
Sub 100 kWh per tonne cooked product
Reduce your average input energy to cook 1 tonne of soup and sauce with APRIL Batch Processing.
Achieve near-perfect energy transfer with Steam Infusion cooking and significantly reduce energy losses during processing.
Watch Ian Beauchamp, explain how APRIL cuts energy consumption.
“This is the most innovative development we have seen in the last 20 years; it halves the capital equipment costs and yet it is much more agile. ”
Benefits of robotic batch processing
High efficiency
Reduce capital equipment by 50% through large increases in utilisation.
Flexible
Meet demand for the ‘batch of 1’ with quick changeovers and flexible production. Reduce changeover time by up to 85%.
Pipe-less
No pipework and reduced infrastructure ensures less waste and improved uptime with no blockages and reduced CIP.
Modular
Scale up and down depending on your production needs - the system allows you to future-proof your operations.
Sustainable
Meet your net-zero targets by using less water and energy every batch.
Unmanned
Cut labour costs and protect operator health with our robotic system.
