What is AMABOX?

Welcome to the future of ingredient handling

The AMABOX System eliminates 100% of manual dosing, weighing and hand-tipping of ingredients. The system can handle an unlimited number of ingredients, completely traceable and highly accurate, and has a very low cross-contamination. This will drastically reduce operator involvement in hand-tip preparation and improve working conditions, quality and plant efficiency.

AMABOX delivers a completely modular and scalable system. This regards the number of ingredients, total storage capacity, dosing capacity, number of mixing lines, etcetera. Because of the modular design with box transportation options, the storage capabilities are extremely flexible.

The AMABOX System consists different machines, with at its core an automatic storage of ingredients and dosing and weighing of components. The system is designed around standardized boxes (with a lid), the boxes are (automatically) filled with powder products from bag/sack or bigbag/supersack. From the filling on, the boxes are automatically handled. For the tracking & tracing, all ingredients are barcode scanned, weight checked at every station and the boxes are tracked with RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags. Controlled by production orders, the BoxDoser automatically doses and weighs the required ingredients in the mix line. Dosing takes place with an electric, servo-controlled dosing slide. The BoxTipper then automatically discharges the ingredients, in time, into the batch mixer, which is part of the production process. 

The different modules can be configured completely to the customers’ wish, from assisted dosing & weighing to a large scale 100% automated ingredient handling.

This image shows a layout of the AMABOX System and the different parts that it consists of.
Layout of the different parts of the AMABOX System

Because the ingredients and mixtures in this system are not dosed from silos, but from the boxes – comparable to the well-known crates – the unloading is not hindered by settling and bridging. The automation includes a machine learning system, that learns from previously observed deviations in dosing and weighing and takes them into account in the following batches. In addition, check-weighing prevents any errors. Dosing the wrong ingredients is almost impossible, because the human factor is eliminated.

The AMABOX System will improve the Health and Safety situation for operators by providing an ergonomic working place for emptying bags. Emptying bags by robot will also be available in the future.

Interesting ROI (return on investment): the AMABOX System in-time tipping of boxes in the blending line, will allow you to produce significantly more with the same production setup. It can, in most cases, be implemented in existing buildings, avoiding expensive and time-consuming additional building constructions and permit applications and at last, the flexibility of the AMABOX System gives you an opportunity to save raw material cost by providing you the flexibility to customize premix for every recipe (instead of compromising in the number of premixes used). 1-2% cost saving on raw-material cost is not exceptional.

Before – Impression of manual addition in a conventional factory

After – Impression of automatic tipping in factory with AMABOX

Just imagine: no more addition of the individual ingredients, no more waiting for the operator who is busy with other activities, no more supply and removal of bags in the factory and no more waiting times because ingredients are not available. The box with the mixture, which has already been filled in advance, is ready for addition to the mixer. Of course, the system does require an investment, but we can demonstrate that it quickly pays off, even if the amount of additional ingredient tipping is limited. Another positive development is that the operator from the control room is no longer burdened with the dusty and unhealthy dumping of the powders. The operator in 2022 – often with a higher education – is no longer ‘eager’ to perform this action 10 times an hour.

Erik Smulders, Founder

Maximum flexibility

New ingredients are introduced every day. Whether it is economically driven, providing new nutritional benefits, or offering the marketing team the nicest quality claims: new ingredients are introduced every day, so the number of ingredients is continuously increasing. Most likely, these ingredients will have to be manually handled. It is a worldwide and industry-wide trend. What used to be 20 ingredients manually handled, is now 40 and can be 80 or more in the future. Working with a limited and fixed number of silos can only support you to some extent. What you require is real and maximum flexibility.

Now the solution is here: the AMABOX system. It will handle this ever-changing and continuously increasing number of ingredients with ease. Whether you have 20, 40, 80 or even over 200 ingredients, it does not matter.

It even deals with this without demanding any increase of operator involvement. In fact, the AMABOX system will eliminate all down-sides of manually handling ingredients, like HSE, operator errors and timely presence at the mixing line, and in this process the AMABOX system also offers you up to 15% efficiency increase of your production facility.

The AMABOX system is capable to grow with you, as your production grows.

Sometimes by simply adding boxes, increasing storage capacity or bringing another BoxDoser online. AMABOX can often do this within existing building profiles and operating permits, because of the modular design and good transportation facilities. This is what we call: maximum flexibility.

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