Interpack 2026: TNA launches robag Quantum fully automatic packaging system
22 May 2026 | TNA Solutions
Simon Hill, group product innovation manager at TNA Solutions, presented the new robag Quantum fully automatic packaging system for snack and confectionery production lines. According to Hill, digital tools are becoming increasingly important in food manufacturing.
Hi from Interpack 2026, I'm speaking to Simon Hill, the group product innovation manager at.
Thanks for being with us.
Thank you.
So could you tell us what are you presenting at the show this year?
Today we're presenting our brand new robag, Roeback Quantum.
So I haven't released a brand new roebag in almost 25 years.
This is a landmark for the industry, so we're very excited to bring it to Tin Interpack.
As always, we come here every, every time.
The best trade show in the world to do launches.
So here we are again, doing the biggest launch in our industry.
And what market and customer trends or issues do you address?
So whenever we began this project 3 or 4 years ago, we broke it down into what we call the four forces.
So we have our customers have reducing labor availability.
That's one of the big problems.
They have more launching more and more new products.
So more and more changeovers is required, which involves more labor, believe it or not.
The third one is reducing bag sizes.
Bag sizes are reducing every single year and again that makes the problem worse again.
Those three forces fuel each other inside our customers' facilities, and sustainability is the 4th issue.
As you try and go faster at lower target weights, smaller bags or waste will increase and the sustainability pressure increases as.
And how does this help you stand out from companies offering similar offerings?
So what we did whenever we learned those 4 forces, those 4 things that are happening in our customers' facilities, we then developed a framework called Easier, Better, Faster, and Smarter.
So this machine is the class leading in all 4 categories.
So easier, we have full automatic setup.
All manual knobs and interactions that operators have to get right, which is their responsibility, increasing their responsibility to get right, that's gone.
They don't need to worry about getting everything perfect anymore.
The machine is fully automatic set up.
Also then faster, so instead of just going today we're running at 200 bags per minute.
We can also run up to 280 bags per minute.
It's not 200 is not the limit.
And for reference point, the 150, 160 was the speed of our oldest machine, our last machine.
Now we're bringing that up to 220 to 240.
So now the performance is there.
We are jumping up as bag sizes reduce.
They need to go faster on these bag sizes and then smarter.
So the system itself is introducing a lot of new AI technology through AI with our partners, so cloud connectivity and connecting machines to machine.
Machine learning, we're introducing that to the market.
No one has ever done these things before.
It's also covered by 9 individual patents.
So whenever first launched the robot back in 1994, it was 1 patent.
Now there's 9 across the whole machine, 40, more than 40 years later.
Awesome.
And how are current and upcoming regulations like the impact that comes down to one of the biggest trends of smaller bags we talked about earlier is portion sizes are reducing globally, not just in one or two countries anymore, globally.
So a multipack demand in variety packs, so different products in the one multipack, is going exponential in some markets.
North America, nobody expected it, but it's going literally exponential.
We've seen exponential growth in North America for high speed small bags, believe it or not, and in Europe.
Be small bags for a long time.
They are going even smaller, so the health and wellness trends are continuing and for producers who have facilities, fixed size facilities, they need to produce more bags per square meter than ever before.
So it's getting quite tough for them.
And anything else that you would like to add?
Not really.
Come and see us.
We can give you a much more deeper conversation.
There's like I said, there are 9 individual patents.
Anybody that's interested in packaging or have been in this industry for a long time, there's stuff here you've never seen before, believe me, and we'd love to introduce you to you.
