Chef Robotics, a leader in AI-enabled robotic meal assembly for the food manufacturing industry, and JBT Marel's Proseal, a global leader in tray sealing solutions, are partnering to provide a joint solution for meal assembly automation. The solution will allow food manufacturers to flexibly automate the assembly and packaging of fresh and frozen ready-to-eat (RTE) and ready-to-cook (RTC) meals.

Food manufacturers have traditionally found meal assembly challenging to automate, especially in high-mix production environments that require different stock-keeping units (SKUs) on the same production line with quick changeovers.

Chef is addressing this challenge with flexible robots that occupy the same footprint as a worker and operate safely alongside humans while picking and placing various ingredients into trays on a conveyor. Utilizing an AI-enabled perception system, Chef robots accurately detect trays and precisely place ingredients while meeting high throughput requirements.

"Food companies are under more pressure than ever to reduce costs and increase throughput while maintaining flexibility," said Rajat Bhageria, CEO of Chef Robotics. "By partnering with Proseal, we can deliver a seamless automation solution that goes beyond meal assembly to include sealing and packaging. Food manufacturers with high-mix, high-volume production environments can now handle food assembly and packaging with the same precision and flexibility at a fraction of the labor cost."

The joint solution combines Chef's AI focus and flexibility with Proseal's robust, high-quality tray sealing machines and packaging solutions to provide food manufacturers with a flexible end-to-end solution for their meal assembly and packaging needs. Chef's robots and Proseal's tray sealing machines are easy to use and support rapid changeovers, freeing up line workers' time for more meaningful tasks.

"Chef brings a next-generation approach to food automation with its AI and vision-based robotics platform," said Chris Mills, director of engineering at Proseal. "Speed and flexibility are two important differentiators for Proseal as well as Chef, so I instantly knew we would want to create a partnership. Together, we can help our customers automate more production lines while remaining agile in the ever-changing food manufacturing market."

About Chef Robotics
Chef is the first company to have commercialized a scalable AI-driven food robotics solution. With over 65 million servings made in production, Chef leverages ChefOS, an AI platform for food manipulation, to offer a Robotics-as-a-Service solution that helps industry-leading food companies increase production volume and meet demand. Headquartered in San Francisco, CA, Chef aims to empower humans to do what humans do best by accelerating the advent of intelligent machines. 

About Proseal
Proseal, one of JBT Marel's product lines, is an innovative and pioneering organisation within the fast-paced food industry. They take pride, not only in producing a range of high quality, efficient, cost-effective tray sealing and case packing machines, but also in providing a service that surpasses customers' expectations. With many years' experience in the tray sealing industry, Proseal has a deep understanding of the demanding production requirements to which machinery in this sector is subjected. Combined with the high level of after sales service they provide, their business continues to go from strength to strength. JBT Marel brings together the complementary strengths of both the JBT and Marel organizations to transform the future of food.