A new sustainable food packaging hub to reduce waste and increase automation is being set up in North Wales.
The hub is being established at the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre Cymru (AMRC Cymru) in Broughton after a £2m investment from the Welsh Government.
The money will help develop an emerging technology demonstrator specifically for the Welsh food and drink sector that will accelerate the adoption of waste-reducing eco-innovations by integrating digital industrial technology in the packaging industry.
The sustainability centre will become a hub for the uptake of emerging technologies and materials in the food and drink packaging supply chain. It will aim to lead to the adoption of waste-reducing eco-innovations in the sector that increase productivity and lower Life Cycle Assessment (LCA).
Lesley Griffiths, Minister for Environment, Energy & Rural Affairs, said: “Our ambition is to raise Wales’ international profile and proactively market our innovation in quality food and drink to the world.
"I believe the innovations we are exploring at AMRC Cymru can deliver a range of measures to future-proof the industry in Wales.
“We want to see the food, drink and packaging industry reducing its reliance on manual labour and increasing skill levels within the sector and are extremely interested in exploring innovation in processes.
"This will drive forward the industry into a new era of green growth in the Welsh economy and it is vital the sector responds to these high potential opportunities.
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"This can only be achieved by urgently developing new processes and incorporating the new technologies to tackle single-use plastic and recycling.”
The hub will exhibit the AMRC Cymru’s capabilities in advanced automation, collaborative robotics, additive manufacturing and visualisation and there will also be prototyping and functional test equipment for new packaging solutions and ideas.
The £2m funding - secured from the BITES (Business, Innovation and Tourism Escalator Scheme - will be used in two key areas at AMRC Cymru.
Firstly, the development of an emerging technology demonstrator that comprises a re-configurable, modular system for prototyping production processes and secondly equipment infrastructure that supports the progress of new designs, materials and processes.
Bobby Manesh, AMRC Cymru’s Food and Drink technical lead, said: “These technologies are widely used in other industries but don’t really exist within food and drink.
"There are new challenges for us as food and drink packaging companies work in a high-speed, low-cost environment, so the demonstrator will display how they can be implemented in a different manufacturing set up.
“The hub will have a central demonstrator based on a conveyor system which will be linked together with collaborative robots, AGVs and our own engineers wearing exoskeletons.
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"Everything will be visualised and tracked through cameras so we will have a digital twin of the process that can be viewed on a screen in real time.”
In 2014 the Food and Drink Action Plan stated an ambitious target to achieve growth for the sector to £7bn turnover (food and farming) by 2020 - a 30% increase.
The target was well and truly beaten with recorded turnover of £7.47bn at the end of 2019. The latest figures show the whole food and drink supply chain in Wales employs 229,500 people and has an overall annual turnover of £22.1bn.
Minister for Economy, Transport and North Wales, Ken Skates, said: “North Wales has the operational capabilities to maximise the opportunities to deliver and drive forward innovation in the food and drink sector.
“The successful delivery of the Food and Drink Packaging Sustainability Centre will create a more resilient Welsh economy which helps develop companies that are profitable and sustainable.
“The state-of-the-art facilities at AMRC Cymru in Broughton will be key in developing unique technological solutions which will enhance the global competitiveness of Welsh firms, reinforcing our food and drink sector’s world-leading reputation.