Food and beverage manufacturing entered 2025 facing a crisis. Production lines are short‑staffed and increasingly populated by workers in their late forties, giving rise to higher vacancy levels among the most critical roles as retirement rates outpace new hires. At the same time, new European sustainability rules have raised the stakes for any firm whose record on injuries or absenteeism falters by obliging manufacturers to report hard metrics on employee safety and wellbeing.
In response to these pressures, food and beverage manufacturers are adopting advanced automation technologies, with collaborative robots (cobots) emerging as a potentially transformative solution. Cobot integration is designed to work alongside human employees safely and efficiently, distinguishing them from traditional industrial robots that typically operate in isolation behind safety barriers. The collaborative nature of cobots allows them to fill workforce gaps, streamline operations, and ensure consistent quality.
This article examines how careful and considered cobot integration can enable plants to stem the labour crunch, reduce injuries and curb absenteeism. It also assesses the human impact and outlines some of the change‑management practices that are required for successful adoption.
A labour market under acute strain
Food production has long relied on physically demanding, repetitive tasks. This type of work often struggles to attract young workers, and consequently the median age of shop floor personnel in food plants now exceeds 45 (in OECD regions), with retirement rates outpacing new hires. The resulting shortfalls are visible in JOLTS data for the US, where unfilled production vacancies in food manufacturing averaged more than 110,000 per month in 2024 – double the 2015 level.
Firms have responded by raising the amount of overtime and increasing the number of temporary hires, but both measures merely mask turnover‑driven inefficiencies that ultimately erode operating margins. Ultimately, these stopgap measures produce a negative feedback loop: hard‑to‑fill jobs become riskier and less attractive, prompting further attrition.
Turnover is expensive for two reasons. Firstly, direct replacement costs typically equate to ~35-45% of the annual salary for semiskilled plant workers. Secondly, safety risks rise sharply when new or fatigued employees perform physically demanding or repetitive tasks such as manual palletising or line feeding, driving up lost‑time injuries. Deploying cobots to shoulder this workload can cut injuries considerably. For instance, one snack‑food manufacturer reported that replacing manual palletising with a cobot eliminated injury‑related downtime and cut workers’ compensation claims by 40% within 12 months. Such reductions have a considerable actuarial value, with insurers rewarding verified injury‑rate improvements with lower premiums, providing employers with a double dividend, lower insurance costs and higher productivity.
How cobot integration reshapes the shop floor
Cobot integration breaks the negative feedback cycle by absorbing dull and dangerous tasks. This leaves employees free to supervise flow, manage exceptions, and inspect quality. At the same time, cobot’s intuitive, no-code programming and built-in safety sensors means they also require markedly less engineering effort to deploy. For instance, a packaging technician can teach a new pick‑and‑place routine in minutes, and in practical terms, palletising is often the entry point.
Successful cobot integration requires a carefully considered human‑capital plan. Taking a structured approach to training and managing people when introducing cobots often mitigates resistance and maximises the benefits of automation. This typically begins by selecting existing floor workers to become the cobot experts. These workers receive official training from the robot manufacturers and the opportunity to earn recognised certifications.
From this, a clear career advancement path is created for the employees while also providing the company with in-house expertise and a smoother transition to automated processes. With cobot experts now in place, companies can roll out micro‑learning modules to broader teams, enabling a wider portion of the workforce to understand and interact effectively with the new technology. Finally, collaborative cross‑training is used to build resilience and dilute single‑point skill dependencies, providing employers with a more flexible and adaptable workforce that can respond effectively to operational changes.
The outcome is a qualitative shift for employees, who can transition from repetitive and manual tasks to overseeing process data, performing firstline maintenance and liaising with quality teams. Employers also benefit from a morale dividend. Ergonomic strain consistently appears as the primary reason for leaving in employee exit interviews, especially among older workers. Eliminating strenuous lifting tasks improves how employees view their jobs and lowers turnover rates. This implicitly translates into longer average tenure, which enhances safety outcomes, as experienced staff naturally commit fewer errors than short term hires. At the same time transitioning employees from manual work to technical oversight roles increases job satisfaction and improves employee retention.
The benefits of cobot integration have been realised by a US-based company that automated its palletising operations, demonstrating an effective incorporation of cobots in snack food manufacturing. Prior to introducing collaborative robots, it struggled with frequent workplace injuries and high workers’ compensation costs, largely due to the repetitive, physically demanding nature of manual palletising. After deploying cobots, the manufacturer eliminated injury-related downtime and reduced workers’ compensation claims by 40% within a year. This transformation improved employee safety and morale, while demonstrating how automation can directly address labour shortages and operational inefficiencies in food manufacturing.
The business case for cobots is also supported by favourable government policies, as policymakers are coming to view cobot integration as a lever for both industrial competitiveness and workplace safety improvement. For instance, France’s “Robotique 2030” programme offers accelerated depreciation for automation assets that demonstrably reduce ergonomic risk. At the same time, the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) will oblige certain EU‑based producers to publish quantitative safety and labour‑management data from 2026. Plants that can document a down‑trend in lost‑time incidents will likely be better positioned to meet future regulatory requirements, avoiding potential compliance issues as safety standards continue to tighten.
Maintaining momentum
Labour shortages in food and beverage manufacturing will not abate any time soon, but they can be mitigated. Plants that pair cobot integration with purposeful upskilling can turn a structural talent deficit into an opportunity to re‑engineer work, reduce injury liabilities, and satisfy evolving regulatory expectations.
At Farrelly Mitchell, our food manufacturing consultants provide strategic, commercial, and technical expertise to help food and beverage producers navigate resource and productivity challenges. With a proven track record in automation integration and workforce transformation, we enable our clients to achieve sustainable growth while fostering a safer and more engaged workforce. Contact our food processing and manufacturing experts today to discuss how we can support your business’ continued growth and profitability.
