The Kawasaki Robotics CP110L — a 110-kg-payload palletizing robot engineered for compact production environments — will make its North American debut at PACK EXPO International 2026 (Oct. 18–21, McCormick Place, Chicago), marking a direct play for CPG and food-and-beverage manufacturers struggling to retrofit automation into space-constrained facilities.
The timing is deliberate. According to PMMI's 2026 Robotics in Packaging & Processing report, 61% of end users surveyed expect to increase robotics investment over the next 12 months. For grocery and consumer packaged goods producers, palletizing remains one of the highest-ROI automation entry points — but legacy plant layouts often make standard palletizer footprints impractical. The CP110L's revolute-axis interference radius of 453 mm and minimum ceiling requirement of 2,242 mm are engineered around that real-world constraint.
Performance Specs
At peak throughput, the CP110L processes up to 2,200 cases per hour under specified operating conditions, with a maximum reach of 2,505 mm and repeatability of ±0.05 mm across four controlled axes. A hollow-wrist design routes cables and hoses internally, reducing interference with adjacent line equipment and cutting maintenance complexity — a meaningful advantage in high-velocity food and beverage packaging environments where uptime directly impacts fill rates and retail on-shelf availability. An integrated power-regeneration function recaptures energy during deceleration, converting it into reusable electrical energy; in palletizing cycles with frequent vertical movement, that feature can reduce operating costs over time.
The CP110L also expands Kawasaki's CP Series lineup, which now spans payloads from 110 kg to 700 kg, giving system integrators and food manufacturers a broader range of robot-to-application matches across SKU weights and pack formats. Paul Marcovecchio, Director GI Industries at Kawasaki Robotics (USA), Inc., framed the commercial rationale plainly: "Palletizing is often one of the clearest places for manufacturers to automate, but the available space at the end of the line doesn't always match the automation they want to install. The CP110L gives customers another way to increase palletizing capacity without assuming they have unlimited floor space or ceiling height."
Broader PACK EXPO Showcase
Beyond the CP110L launch, Kawasaki Robotics (Booth N-5933) will demonstrate two additional end-of-line automation configurations relevant to CPG operators. An R Series case-packing cell, designed and integrated by Design For Making around Kawasaki's RS013N robot, features a 13-kg payload and 1,460-mm reach with an expandable architecture for vision, additional tooling, and safety tech as production scales. Separately, the IRIS RPZ-U palletizing system — developed in partnership with IRIS Factory Automation — pairs a modular palletizing platform with the RS025N robot (25-kg payload, 1,885-mm reach) in a turnkey configuration designed for rapid integration into existing lines.
For grocery and CPG category operators evaluating supply chain and packaging automation options, the multi-robot showcase underscores a broader industry shift: manufacturers are increasingly sourcing palletizing solutions that can handle mixed SKU formats — such as boxed dry goods alongside bagged pet food — without tooling changeovers, a capability that directly supports the private label and branded grocery co-packing environments where flexibility is premium. With 61% of packaging end users planning robotics investment increases, competitive pressure on CPG suppliers to modernize end-of-line operations is only accelerating.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
