One of the big reasons we put on our ArticulATE food robotics conference earlier this month, was that we could see the rise in automation throughout the food stack. Now Meticulous Research projects some numbers for that growth, with a report out today saying the size of the global food robotics market will hit $3.1 billion by 2025, growing at a CAGR of 12.7 percent between 2019 and 2025.
According to the press announcement, there are a number of factor that will drive this growth, including: “increasing food safety regulations, rising demand for advanced food packaging, growing demand to improve productivity, increasing production of low-cost robots, increase in investments for automated solutions in food industry, and growing demand for reducing production cost and increasing food shelf-life leading to increased adoption of robotic systems.”
Meticulous Research predicts that articulating robots (think: Flippy) will be the most popular form of food robot because their speed and accuracy continues to improve while their price keeps dropping.
Europe is the biggest user of food robots, followed by North America and Asia-Pacific. However, Meticulous Research predicts “significant growth” in food robot use in the Asia-Pacific during the forecast period because of investment in automation as well as growing demand for food safety regulation and packaged goods.
If you follow The Spoon then this report shouldn’t be a huge surprise. For the second year in a row, there were a record number of robots shipped in North America, with the food industry among the top non-automotive sectors buying.
More anecdotally, during our ArticulATE conference, we heard from companies across the food world talking about how a growing global population and its desire to, you know, eat, combined with a labor shortage is generating increase interest automation. As this report notes, these food robots are getting better (Flippy is on its third generation), smaller and cheaper. And from my personal experience, robots are pretty great at making food as well.
