中文At Anuga FoodTec India 2026, ABB’s Machine Automation Division (B&R) arrived with a deceptively simple question: how can automation raise the productivity of the complete production line rather than just individual machines? It is a question that reframes where the next wave of packaging and food-and-beverage efficiency will be won — and B&R’s showcase suggested the answer sits in connectivity, mechatronics and AI working together.
Pratip Samanta, regional managing director for Southern and Eastern Asia at B&R, explained that the portfolio was split into two parts: conventional automation covering control products, HMI and motion, and the mechatronics portfolio. In the motion segment, ACOPOS D1 — a single-axis motion drive made in China — targets applications where cost and performance must be balanced, aimed at less critical duties than B&R’s higher-end offerings. The competitive pitch is price-to-performance, a priority in a cost-sensitive Indian market.
The mechatronics highlight was ACOPOS 6D, B&R’s magnetic levitation conveying technology, with clear applications in food and beverage, consumer products, beauty and beyond — filling, labeling, capping and dispatch brought together in a compact conveying system. Alongside the hardware, B&R demonstrated AI-assisted engineering through Automation Studio Copilot and its Agentic AI Bridge, tools designed to help engineers across the automation lifecycle, from creating programs and projects to completing them.
For Samanta, the more notable market shift is the growing attention to automation beyond the machine itself. “Machine builders were so far focusing heavily on machine automation. But in order to gain the full productivity of the line, end-of-line automation is very important,” he said. That perspective is reshaping how builders view software and connectivity: machines are becoming more AI-enabled and IT-oriented, while software-defined automation and open architectures make systems adaptable to customer needs.
The hard part is not collecting more data. In a highly automated plant, data often remains trapped in separate systems and machines, creating silos. “How we should ensure that the data silos are not there, how we could bring the data in a common platform,” Samanta asked, is the real challenge. B&R showed an edge solution at the exhibition aimed at making machine data available for analysis and actionable insight, with the objective of moving from improving individual machine productivity toward improving whole-plant efficiency.
The Indian market, Samanta noted, is following many of the same automation trends seen in Europe, though its cost sensitivity makes price-to-performance decisive. “Automation is a part and parcel for Indian customers as well,” he said. B&R’s increased focus on packaging, pharma, medical devices and related industries aligns with that reality, and the strength of conversations at the show — already moving beyond machine automation toward line efficiency — indicates where the division’s growth is headed.
The takeaway for packaging producers is that the biggest, most defensible productivity gains now come from orchestrating the line as a system: levitation conveying, AI-assisted engineering and edge data platforms working in concert. Vendors that help manufacturers dissolve data silos, rather than merely sell faster machines, are the ones positioned to capture the next phase of industrial automation.
Source: https://thepackman.in/br-focuses-on-smarter-connected-automation-for-food-and-beverage/
B&R’s Bet on line-wide automation reflects a broader maturation in industrial control. For decades, machine builders competed on the speed and precision of individual machines; the next frontier is orchestrating those machines into a responsive production system. ACOPOS 6D’s magnetic levitation conveying is the physical expression of that idea — replacing fixed mechanical transport with software-defined motion that can be reconfigured for different products without re-engineering the line. In food, beverage, beauty and pharma, where filling, labelling, capping and dispatch must coordinate tightly, that flexibility is increasingly the differentiator.
The AI-assisted engineering tools — Automation Studio Copilot and the Agentic AI Bridge — point to where the labour bottleneck sits. Skilled control engineers are scarce, and the cost of programming and commissioning complex lines is a real barrier to automation adoption, especially for cost-sensitive markets. Tools that draft programs, suggest configurations and complete projects shorten that cycle and lower the entry cost, broadening the addressable market beyond the largest plants.
Samanta’s candour about data silos is the honest core of the pitch. A highly automated plant can still be blind if machine and system data never meet. B&R’s edge solution, aimed at making machine data available for analysis and actionable insight, addresses the gap between collecting data and using it — a gap that has swallowed many industrial digitalisation initiatives. The objective is explicit: move from improving individual machine productivity to improving whole-plant efficiency.
For the Indian market, the strategy is well calibrated. Automation is already table stakes, but price-to-performance dominates purchasing decisions, and a vendor that can demonstrate line-wide gains rather than isolated machine specs is better placed to win. As B&R sharpens its focus on packaging, pharma and medical devices, the Anuga FoodTec showcase suggests the division’s growth will come less from selling faster machines and more from dissolving the silos that keep plants from running as systems.
