The customer

f&f SA/AG packs and distributes eggs from its plant in Schötz (LU), Switzerland. The operation runs on a just-in-time model. Eggs leave the building within 3–4 days of arrival. They are certified to the FSSC 22000 food-safety standard. Traceability and consistent quality are non-negotiable at every stage of the line.

For years, they have been searching for an automated solution to pack egg cartons into transport boxes at the end of their grading lanes. No solution they looked at was ever compact enough to fit within their lanes or fast enough on their packing configurations.

The Challenge

F&F SA/AG has plenty of grading capacity through their Moba Omnia PX 350 egg grader. The end of line process is the most labour intensive part of the process. Cartons come off the end of the grader where staff pack them into cardboard or reusable plastic boxes, carton by carton, box after box. It’s repetitive, physically demanding work.

• Labor heavy - Whenever the plant is running, f&f needs a team of 6-10 people packing eggs off the output lanes of its egg grader.
• Hard to scale - Adding more capacity means adding more people.
• Quality risk - After hours of packing products, it’s easy to not notice a carton with a missing best before date or misprinted label.
• Space constraints - As an existing facility, they don’t have lots of space to fit in huge new machines or route conveyors from one end of the facility to the other. The solution would have to slot right into their existing line.

The Solution

In March 2026, f&f SA/AG installed the Witty Machines case packer at the end of the line.

It's a compact robotic case packer. One meter wide, built to fit between existing packing lanes without rebuilding the line around it. It picks cartons as they arrive and places them into transport boxes in the required pattern. The boxes come out on a dedicated output conveyor from which they get palletized.

The case packer automates 2 of the 18 lanes on the Moba grader.

What made it the right fit:‍

• No complicated integration. The case packer doesn’t need complicated integration or coordination with the existing line. The only connection is to bypass the automated line in case the case packer is stopped. It simply waits for cartons to arrive and packs them. Standard AC power and compressed air in, packed eggs out.‍
• Fits the existing line. A 1 × 1.5 × 1.9 m footprint. No need to have lots of space behind the grader. No need for complicated conveyor setups. Access to the upstream lane is preserved, as workers can still walk past the case packer.‍
• Quality control. Visual defect detection rejects crushed cartons, missing best-before dates, open cartons, and missing labels onto a dedicated product rejection ramp before they get into a transport box. From the rejection ramp, they can be checked and fixed by workers to feed back into the process, if possible.

The Results

Throughput

On their packing configurations, the case packer typically packs 25 000  eggs per hour from the double lane it’s installed on. It’s able to pack multiple cartons per pick, whenever the pattern allows for it.

A person is typically able to pack 15-20,000 eggs per hour on the same lanes, meaning they were able to increase their production capacity on the automated packing lanes.

Labor reallocation

Now, labour is only required to feed in transport boxes and palletize the boxes coming out, freeing up time from the workers to work on higher value tasks. They plan to eventually automate the palletizing step as well, further removing a heavy workstep from the process.

Fast installation

The initial installation was done in a day. No complicated IT integration or line reconfiguration was required. The machine was rolled into place, connected to the egg grader and the output conveyors were put into place. The next shift, the machine was packing the first egg cartons.

Conclusions

f&f are satisfied with the results and the collaboration with Witty Machines.

They plan to further increase the level of automation. They’ve already placed an order for a second case packer to automate the neighboring lanes.

Watch the video of the machine running here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNC0QnJM4bo