F.lli Sacchi S.n.c. – South Africa Edition

The revolution of industrial automation in the food powder sector is driven by advanced robotic solutions such as SmartPick, SmartTipping, and SmartPack.
Sacchi worldwide leader in robotic powder handling has developed a fully robotic integrated platform for the production of complex powder mixes that are then packaged in bags. This article describes an integrated system that utilizes these three modular systems to manage the dosing, mixing, and packaging of powders, ensuring precision, traceability, hygiene, efficiency, and safety.
The integration of SmartPick, SmartTipping, and SmartPack in this platform offers a comprehensive system for dosing, mixing, and packaging powders.
The main components of the system are SmartPick manages the supply of medium and large quantities of powders to the mixer, SmartTipping handles micro-dosing, and SmartPack packages the final product.
This combined system has many advantages:
• Increases production efficiency,
• Ensures precision in dosing and mixing,
• Reduces risks for operators,
• Ensures total product traceability and quality, almost doubles the production capacity.
The adoption of this integrated robotic system has been successfully implemented by manufacturers of food ingredients, spices and flavours, ice cream preparations, sauces and fillings, ready meals, and represents a significant step towards full automation and optimization of production processes, improving competitiveness and quality in the food and chemical sectors.
The SmartPick system is designed to automate the handling of bags containing large quantities of raw materials. This robotic system picks up bags up to 80 kg, opens them, empties them, and doses the contents into mixers, kneaders, blenders, and general processing machines, ensuring the correct preparation of recipes. The main advantages include:
• Complete automation of bagged recipes.
• Certification of recipe correctness.
• Automatic traceability of raw materials.
• Elimination of manual labour and handling.
• Reduction of operator exposure to powders.
The use of SmartPick reduces risks associated with manual handling of powders, improves production efficiency, traceability, and ensures a safer and more hygienic working environment.
SmartTipping is a robotic solution for the precise dosing of microcomponents. It uses various types of feeders, such as screw, belt, and vibrating feeders, to ensure extremely accurate dosing, down to tenths of a gram. This system is ideal for preparing recipes that require precise amounts of minor ingredients. The main features of SmartTipping include:
• Precise and synchronized coordination of dosers.
• Collection of micro-doses in containers or bags.
• Batch traceability via barcodes or RFID.
• Adaptability to different dosing needs.
• Direct interfacing with processing machines.
SmartTipping ensures unprecedented operational flexibility and modularity, enabling precise and reliable management of micro-dosing.
SmartPack is a highly efficient robotic packaging solution for powders and granules. This system fills, seals, or sews the bags and palletizes them, ensuring uniform and consistent production. The main features of SmartPack include:
• Robotic system for the entire packaging and palletizing process.
• Compact and versatile layout.
• Customizable configuration based on customer needs.
• Ease of management and cleaning.
• Zero downtime product changeover.
SmartPack is designed to adapt to various sectors, including food, pharmaceutical, and chemical, offering a complete and integrated solution for the packaging of mixed powders.