B-Loony Ltd. Increases Productivity and Reduces Costs with Universal Robots

The Challenge

Evolving market demands and rising labour costs meant B-Loony needed to significantly increase productivity and efficiency to remain competitive in the UK and abroad markets. Strong demand and short lead times for specific product lines also left B-Loony under pressure to develop a solution that allowed employees to be more efficient and reactive to customer demands.

As each job is highly customised, with quantities ranging from as little as 250 to 2 million products per order, flexibility and scalability were also paramount.

The Benefits

The cobots’ ease and flexibility visibly boosted factory productivity, allowing B-Loony to increase output and cut the average cost of each item produced. “Despite rising inflation and labour costs, investing in robotics and automation has made us more efficient and able to compete,” states Clephan.

Another benefit of the cobots has been the ability to redeploy them at short notice when circumstances change. “For example, the product line the cobots were initially brought in for was discontinued. Yet the company was able to simply re-program the cobots and have them up and running elsewhere, future-proofing the investment,” Clephan explains.

With the help of cobot automation, B-Loony is now producing a staggering 1,200 miles+ bunting each year, a distance equivalent of London to Casablanca. Furthermore, it has increased the output of its highly popular gourmet food flags by over 5000%, from 250 thousand to 15 million annually, significantly increasing its market share.

This increased productivity has resulted in B-Loony achieving a payback period of just nine months for its initial cobot investments. Through economies of scale, it anticipates payback for future projects to be brought down further to just six months.

To find out more about Universal Robots range of cobots, visit our UR Cobots page.