Why Packaging Robotics Is Surging: Packaging World

What's behind the sudden surge in packaging robotics—and is it here to stay?

Senior Editor Anne Marie Mohan sits down with A3's Alex Shikhany to unpack the latest robotics data, including a notable end-of-2025 spike in packaging, picking, and placing applications and the rise of collaborative robots to nearly 20% of total orders. They discuss workforce shortages, e-commerce growth, and how SKU proliferation are pushing manufacturers toward more flexible, accessible automation. 

Watch the full featured video on Packaging World.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Welcome to Through the Line, a podcast exploring innovations and information across the packaging and processing landscape. From topics impacting consumer packaged goods and healthcare packaging to the latest technologies and food processing operations.

SPEAKER_02 0:22

This is Anne-Marie Mohan, senior editor with Packaging World. Recently I sat down with Alex Shikaney. He's the executive vice president of A3, the Association for Advancing Automation, to talk about the latest trends in packaging robotics and what's driving their rapid growth. We discussed new data on material handling applications, which include packaging, picking, and placing, the rise of collaborative robots or cobots, and how workforce challenges and e-commerce demands are reshaping automation strategies for manufacturers. Yeah, I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me. And if you have the questions and you are okay with them, that means that there is a considerable amount of data in the report on robotics for packaging.

SPEAKER_00 1:10

Yeah. Packaging, picking, placing is really the distinction, the subcategory that we have data for. And that rolls up to what we call material handling applications. So packaging, picking, and placing is one subcomponent of the total material handling subset. Material handling is the largest category from an application side that we do track. For the last three-year period, 23 to 20 end of 2025, packaging, picking, and placing, it's pretty consistently almost half of material handling applications that in North America from an order standpoint every quarter. But it ebbs and flows with everything. There's a little bit of cyclicality, depends on certain customers and orders and things like that. But the real takeaway here is look what happened in the end of 2025, where packaging, picking, and placing really took off there and really notably grew. And so I think as the backdrop to some of our later questions that, you know, we'll the conversation will take us to, I wanted you to have that context that that's what our data shows. And I believe that this is going to continue. Now, this may be a spike. We've seen spikes before, right? But I think generally speaking, packaging, picking, and placing is one of the most approachable areas for customers to start automating and using robotics. Food and consumer goods had a really good year in 2025. In fact, it was the leading growth category by percentage in terms of new orders last year. And it just anecdotally, knowing this, because I talked to our members and I know what types of applications, generally speaking, happen in food and consumer goods, packaging, picking, and placing is a big component of that. And to answer your question about could it mean the robot manipulating food items coming down a line or putting them in a box or orienting them properly for some process? Absolutely. We've we see that we have members that do that type of integration, that's those types of technologies and solutions. But it can also mean things like palletizing, for example, at the end of line in food and consumer. So once the boxes or the bins are already assembled, putting them on pallets, maybe doing wrapping applications or manipulating them at that stage. So it's really up and down the line in that industry, like it is in most other industries.

SPEAKER_02 3:31

So switching gears, the report says that collaborative robots reach nearly 20% of total orders in 2025. Do you know how much of this 20% is represented by packaging applications?

SPEAKER_00 3:46

And 2025 was the first year we actually started reporting collaborative robot statistics. And the it actually was pretty volatile quarter to quarter. It was the first quarter started off okay. We didn't know really how to measure it to the history because it was our first quarter. The second quarter expanded drastically, then reduced in the third quarter, and then really expanded in the fourth quarter. But it it follows a similar trajectory as the main market that we looked at, right? When you look at collaborative robots in general, by far, if not more than the overall market, material handling is far and away the biggest application. And knowing that of material handling, packaging, picking, and placing is right there in terms of being the top subcategory within material handling. So without being able to give you the hard numbers, yes, packaging, picking, and placing is a very important application for collaborative robots, and they're certainly being used in those types of in those applications.

SPEAKER_02 4:46

Okay. And yeah, I would say over the last, what, three, four years, we're seeing a lot more or we're seeing cobots that can handle palletizing applications. So I would imagine there's a lot more of that happening as well.

SPEAKER_00 5:02

Yeah, across the board. As more collaborative robots get released and developed, and again, the value proposition of collaborative robots inherently is that they need less rigid safety caging or things like that, because they're usually power and force limited or other safety solutions with them. So you can have a more open, collaborative kind of environment when you put them out there. You can have people working near them. And so I think we're gonna continue to see that grow over time as more collaborative robots are released that can handle heavier payloads, maybe, or have more degrees of freedom or different things like that, different sensing technologies included, they're gonna be able to do more for sure.

SPEAKER_02 5:46

Okay. So you talked a little bit earlier about the workforce challenges and how they are driving the adoption of robotics. How much of a driver is that if you look across the board at some of the other drivers? I feel like workforce challenges are the main driver, but I'm interested.

SPEAKER_00 6:07

I totally agree with you. Work for workforce is one is when we talk about these things to various groups of people, to users at automate, we ask the government and they engage with us. The workforce is top of the list in almost every single conversation. It's something that pretty much every industry vertical we looked at is wrestling with in one way or another. It's hard to find the people to come in to want to do the jobs, and then it's hard to keep the people there to do certain tasks. And so the pipeline has already dried up in many cases, and the retention is a big issue because these and to have a successful manufacturing or distribution or any kind of business, you need to have some level of stability and growth. And that's what automation and robotics is providing. And that's why I think we're seeing the market grow, is because of what we just said there. But I have young kids, I've spoken with audiences at colleges, universities, things like that, people coming into the workforce, even people getting retrained into automation roles. And one of the things they're looking for in a rewarding career is 21st century tools and technology. And so when they're when they're looking at do I want to go work for this company, do should I go into this industry? One of the factors they're weighing is what's the environment in which I'm going to be working in. And a lot of them view robotics and automation as this is exciting. These are the tools I need to be working with. It's and the more companies that are recognizing that, I think it it's just another reason why they choose to adopt automation today, is because if they don't, if they're operating in an environment that's 20 years old or whatnot, doesn't have the latest and greatest technology, they're not going to be as attractive in vying for the humans, human workers that so many companies need. So that's the other element of it, but it's definitely at the top of the list. Yeah, I liken it too. A lot of times I'll reference it's like going accepting a job and getting a laptop, but the company hasn't supplied you with the Microsoft Office software program. Here's Notepad and Microsoft Paint, and we're expecting you to do the same things, but your competitors and your peers that are working at other companies, they got access to Excel and ChatGPT and Copilot and PowerPoint. And so in the physical world, that's what I believe we're collectively experiencing with automation is that okay, I have to look and behave in a way in the global marketplace that's up to par with the technology standards of the workforce for sure.

SPEAKER_02 8:39

I love that analogy. That's really one that I think everybody can relate to. So SKU proliferation has been something we've been watching for years, but I think some of our readers, uh, the CPGs are getting more involved in how are those two factors, e-commerce growth and skew proliferation pushing companies toward more flexible packaging automation?

SPEAKER_00 9:08

Yeah, I think it's an evolution. My read on it is it's an evolution based, it's being pulled along by the demand, right? The demand side, people, us consumers, are used to now being able to order a tremendous number of different SKUs into one order, potentially. And uh e-commerce orders have never been higher. The ease of placing an order and fulfilling it and the speed to delivery, we all know, is as fast as it's ever been, which places a lot of pressure downward on that supply chain that kind of supports that experience from a user perspective. And so what that means is because we're not, the consumers are not likely to change our behavior now that we're used to it. Our appetites have been satiated. We're like, okay, I like this. I want it same day, or I want to order all these things, some big, some small. We're putting that pressure downward on that supply chain. And so I believe that the automation that that helps support the delivery and that mechanism knows that. And they're plugged in with the CPG companies, and they know that this is what's being asked of us is to provide flexible solutions that are easy to deploy, relatively modular, because demand can change with different SKUs, and that mix is going to change over time. And sometimes small batch, sometimes it's large batch. It just depends on the time of year, seasonal demand swings, and things like that. And so we need to provide solutions from an automation vendor perspective that address those needs from those customers. And that's what you're seeing. You're seeing more flexible picking solutions, you're seeing collaborative robots, you're seeing mobile bases that can be redeployed. On the software side, you're seeing simulation, digital twins, you're seeing planning at a at a scale that we've never seen before because of the expensive decisions that are being made and the expensive downtime that would were to come if something were to go wrong. And all of that has led to a lot of innovation on the robotics and automation side and is leading to the mix of products that are what you said, flexible and provide that environment so that companies can make changes quickly and have very few defects, if any. Absolutely, there are. It goes right from the hardware all the way up through the software and the support. Let's start with the hardware itself. We have hardware like collaborative robots, which right off the bat is more approachable to a lot of SME type companies than the thought of deploying a traditional automation system with of old that you picture in your head where it's in a cell and there's caging and safety stops and things like that. So, right off the bat, the hardware is more approachable. You can hand guide it, training the robot. The robots can, like I mentioned, be hand guided. They can use vision systems now with AI to, with inputs from the human, evaluate the environment and the line or whatever, and be able to optimize its path and its picking and how it grasps an object. These are all relatively more common technologies in a product today than they were certainly when I started in 2012. And people have been in this industry a lot longer than I have, will tell you it hasn't always been like it is today in terms of ease of deployment like that. And then I mentioned simulation and the software side with artificial intelligence. The availability of data is so plentiful that our systems, the systems that help drive and our give information back to the users, the humans, it's more transparent than it's ever been. It's easier to identify and get down to granular issues. At this time, this pick was wrong, or this whatever the variable was that was wrong. And so those things all feed into ease of deployment and approachability. And there are so many different form factors now that if you have a problem as an SME, you're looking for a solution. You don't necessarily know you're coming in, I need this robot or I need this vision system, I need a solution to this challenge. And that's what this industry has done so well with such a strong system integrator, a community. These integrators have seen it, almost seen it all. They know how to attack certain industries or applications differently than others. And a lot of them are actually offering some more turnkey solutions now that they might not have in the past, where they have welding cells or packaging cells or something like that come with a set amount of hardware. You can kind of almost buy it off the shelf with a little bit with less custom integration than a whole new project might have been in the past. Yeah, it's more friendly to SMEs than it ever has been before. I would say that's a fair characterization.

SPEAKER_02 14:27

Well, that's excellent news for our readers for sure. I think in the past we heard the robotics manufacturers talk about how the they have made these systems easier to use, easier to program. But sometimes when I talk to people in the field, they say, uh, that's not really the case. Or it's not as easy as they make it seem, but it sounds like that's changing significantly recently.

SPEAKER_00 14:54

Yeah, there's always going to be growing pains, certainly. And it nothing's 100% for sure. But on the average, coming from a statistical side, when you look at 10, 20 years ago, how easy was a robot to program in terms of the traditional sense, using a teach pendant and doing the things you need to do to get that versus what's available on average today, which is you could roll a robot in on a mobile base and it could do a similar application where there may not need to be any manual programming on certain applications. I'm not saying that's a widespread thing yet, but we're definitely, you could say it's fair to say we're moving in that general direction with AI and vision systems and collaborate, collaborative technologies on the robot itself and within the cells, collaborative applications. We're definitely moving in that direction. So it is definitely fair to say that robots and automation are more approachable today in many respects than they have been ever before, which is great for SMEs to your point. It's great for everybody, but certainly for that group.

SPEAKER_02 16:00

Based on the 2025 data trends, what's your outlook for packaging robotics, say over the next two to three years? Or is that very easy to predict?

SPEAKER_00 16:11

Yeah, it's easy to predict, is a I would say not very much as easy to predict in the world of forecasting. If you're super good at it, then you probably aren't working in forecasting anymore. You're you're playing the stock market or you're doing other things, you're on an island somewhere. Well, I would say we don't typically provide uh an A3 forecast just because it's just not something we've historically done. We typically focus on the issues as we see them and then report the data going forward. But personally, having my experience in the market, seeing this data working in this industry for 14 years now, I'm bullish on packaging robotics in the next two to three years. I think we saw you saw the graph I showed it to start this call where demand clearly was going up at the end of last year. You can make a generalization on average, that red category has been linearly growing over time, at least the last few years. Do I see the demand for robotics and automation in packaging, picking, and placing going down? And if so, why? I don't see it going down. I see the drivers of packaging, picking, and placing is a very, it's one of the 3D applications in a lot of cases. It's a dull, dirty, and dangerous job in some cases, depending on what you're packaging, picking, or placing. And that's where the labor challenges are the most prominent right now is finding people who, number one, want to are interested in taking a job like that. Number two, sticking around to make it a career or something is very challenging. And it's not safe a lot of times. It's repeated movements, it's there's ergonomic challenges. And because of that, I think automation is right there. And I think more companies, more and more companies are realizing that. They're saying, I know I have to use robotics in automation. Where am I going to use it first? The robot can pretty reliably fill this void of not having a human workforce to pick this product and put it here into a box and get it moving down my production line. And I think that's only going to continue. And again, we talked about food and consumer goods being a good example of this, but there's packaging applications all up and down the board of those different industries that I showed you earlier. So packaging lays across all the different industry verticals. I think it's one of the most important applications that automation can help solve for customers. So I'm bullish on the next two to three years. Yep.

SPEAKER_02 18:45

Okay. Excellent. That's as good as a forecast as to attend.

SPEAKER_00 18:50

Without giving you a percentage, yeah. Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:53

So if you were advising a packaging operation on where to focus their automation efforts or how to start moving toward automation, what would you say to them?

SPEAKER_00 19:08

Yeah, that's a good question. First and foremost, I I work in an association that has almost 1,500 member companies that I get the opportunity to engage with, learn from, and show their cool videos and talk to large audiences and say, hey, look at how cool this industry is. And so I've had, I'm really grateful to have the opportunity to see that firsthand and talk to the companies that are doing it. If I'm advising a packaging executive, the first thing I would say is get connected. I would say, I would give them a list. If it were me, I would say, after hearing what their needs were, I would say, sure, you need to go meet and talk to these people. And I would say, get connected, ask them your questions. Integrators, the suppliers of the robots themselves, if the questions had to do with the hardware. There are there's so much expertise in this market, and everybody is so willing to connect and talk through. That's what they do at their core. And so that would be the first and foremost thing is get connected, read articles like the one you're writing, reach out to people at associations that are in your space that can help you with information. From a deployment standpoint, one of the things that we have been saying for a while with support of our members is start smart. Not necessarily start small or start simple, though that can often be what people decide to do, but start smart. Evaluate your own operation. Understand where your bottlenecks are, where your weaknesses are, what problems are you really looking to solve? Once you understand where you're coming up short or where you think you need help, then start in that smart area. Approach, and if it's end of line, for example, because it's it's putting the products into a box, it's like a packaging application or a palletizing application. That's great. There are plenty of solutions you can choose from. Start there and say, I think I want to start here, build some muscle memory, understand internally how to maintain and operate and deploy an automation system, and then I'll expand, I'll grow. But embracing the technology not as a patch to fix a one-time thing, but more of an institutional culture. We're gonna get great with robotics and automation. We're on a journey. We know we need to be sophisticated to compete globally because that's the macro trend. So let's start somewhere where we're reasonably sure we can get an ROI, but it's not gonna be too complex. And then we'll expand out from there once we start building the capabilities. I think that would be my primary feedback to someone who asked.

SPEAKER_01 21:50

Thank you for listening to Through the Line Packaging and Processing. You can listen to more episodes on all streaming platforms. Be sure to visit us at packworld.com. Profoodworld.com and healthcarepackaging.com for more packaging and processing news. This podcast was edited by Bree Guns.