Chef Robotics and ILPRA Partner to Deliver Flexible Automation

SAN FRANCISCO and MORTARA, Italy – Chef Robotics, a company focused on AI-enabled robotic meal assembly, and ILPRA, a global packaging technology company, are partnering with the goal to provide food manufacturers with a flexible, end-to-end automation solution for meal assembly and packaging.

Food manufacturers are facing growing pressure to meet demand while maintaining consistency, safety and efficiency on their production lines, said the companies. Labor shortages and repetitive, manual tasks make it increasingly difficult to sustain high throughput without sacrificing quality or profitability. These challenges are especially acute in meal assembly and packaging, where precision and flexibility are essential but difficult to scale, especially in the cold rooms where production tends to occur and labor shortages are omnipresent, said Chef Robotics and ILPRA.

Chef and ILPRA's joint solution addresses these challenges with flexible, AI-enabled robotics and advanced packaging systems that adapt to hundreds of stock-keeping units (SKUs) and high-mix production lines with frequent changeovers, said the companies.

Together, both companies enable food manufacturers to automate more of their production process for fresh and frozen ready-to-eat (RTE) and ready-to-heat (RTH) meals, said Chef Robotics and ILPRA. Chef robots automate meal assembly by portioning and depositing different food ingredients into trays, while ILPRA tray sealers package the meals.

"This partnership combines Chef's AI focus and flexibility with ILPRA's packaging expertise to help food manufacturers automate more of their production process," said Rajat Bhageria, founder and CEO of Chef Robotics. "Together, we can help our customers increase worker productivity, maximize throughput and reduce giveaway — all while maintaining the consistency consumers expect."

"We're excited to collaborate with Chef Robotics and offer a truly end-to-end automation solution," said Mike Cheatle, vice president at ILPRA America. "Our shared vision is to make food production more efficient, reliable and scalable without compromising quality."

The joint solution is now available to food manufacturers in the United States and Canada. To see a Chef robot and an ILPRA tray sealer serve real ingredients, stop by the ILPRA booth (#1709) at the EATS trade show in Chicago from Oct. 28-30.