As far as the packaging market is concerned, packaging robots are the new trend. A recent report by Transparency Market Research states that the global packaging robot market is predicted to grow at a 14.0 percent CAGR during the period between 2016 and 2024.

The growth in different manufacturing industries, along with the increasing concerns over safety and overall equipment effectiveness, is anticipated to catapult the growth of packaging robot industry worldwide. Packaging robot manufacturers are also introducing packaging robots with advanced technological features such as increased operational speed, high precision, and efficiency. These manufacturers have also started to design packaging robots per industry-specific requirements. For example, one of the global leaders in packaging robotic solutions introduced dedicated picking and packing robots for pharmaceutical applications, where robots can pick and place cartridges twice as fast as conventional packaging robots currently in use. The use of packaging robots will certainly simplify many tasks such as picking, placing, tray packing, palletizing, case packing, de-palletizing, and filling.

IRB 1600, IRB 260, M-1iA, M-2iA, Quantec PA arctic, and D3 Robotic are among the new inventions in the global packaging robot market. Manufacturers of the newly introduced packaging robots say that these flexible robots have the capacity to revolutionize production, especially for smaller companies. The low-priced packaging robots are a boon for small-sized and medium-sized companies.

Demand for packaging robots is expected to be the highest from end-user industries such as food and beverages, chemical, and pharmaceutical. At the same time, the challenges faced by the global packaging robot market are not to be overlooked. The high initial setup cost is expected to hamper the growth of the global packaging robot market in the years to come. Going forward, the global packaging robot market will have to tackle another important challenge of unemployment that might be caused due to the increasing use of packaging robots and automation.

Pragati Pathrotkar works in digital marking a Transparency Market Research.