Ringtons is a manufacturer of the highest quality tea and coffee and is renowned, not only for high quality products but also for supplying them in a wide range of superior packs ensuring that Ringtons remain a market-leader in the premium tea and coffee market.

We have worked with Ringtons for a number of years and the projects we have completed for them are great examples of how we like to apply and tailor the most appropriate level of automation to each application, rather than try and make whatever we have available work.

In 2016 we worked with Ringtons to automate one of their tea packing lines, which was their first move into automatic packing of cartons into cases.  A particular challenge was the limited amount of space available and the large number of SKUs on the line.   Taking this into consideration, we developed a unique system which employed a robot to erect, load and seal cases in a highly versatile and compact footprint.

More recently, Ringtons asked us to automate additional lines however due to an even greater quantity of SKU’s and short runs it was obvious that a fully automated line could not be justified.  We recognised it was better to introduce a semi-automatic system to reduce the level of effort to pack cases rather than try to remove all of the packaging labour.   Once again, we developed a unique solution to create groups of tea cartons and present them to an operator in an ergonomically efficient way which, together with a specially designed case taping system, reduced the level of manual input required resulting in one operator being able to pack the same amount as multiple operators.