Small Potato Producer Gets a Grip on Growth via Robotics

Using robotics to fuel growth while staying competitive, a leading North American grower, shipper, and packager of bite-sized potatoes is keeping costs down and employment and production up.

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By Aaron Hand, Editor-in-Chief, ProFood World

The multi-generational potato farmers of Tasteful Selections began in Nebraska, relocating to Arvin, Calif., to take advantage of the rich farmland and year-round growing season. The journey since has been not only geographical but one of innovation as well. Always searching for business growth opportunities, the company pioneered the category of bite-sized potatoes to offer consumers a simpler and more convenient source of nutritious potatoes.

“We are constantly planting, harvesting, and picking the freshest product for our customers,” says Nathan Bender, chief operating officer for Tasteful Selections. “We’re growing so fast that without automation, we can’t keep up.”

Fanuc robots have been a big part of Tasteful Selections’ journey, including 11 Fanuc M-410iB palletizing robots and five Fanuc M-3iA delta robots for case packing. “What we’re trying to do is flatten our curve of our costs, so we can provide a great service to our customers and keep our pricing down,” says Ernie Waldo, plant manager for Tasteful Selections. “As we’ve rolled out automation, it has been a real blessing to our employees to bring consistency to the line and bring consistency to our costs.”

Tasteful Selections got its start in robotics with the help of Schneider Packaging Equipment, a Fanuc Authorized Systems Integrator. The potato company liked Schneider’s OptiStak, which creates recipes for the layers of boxes to be stacked on the pallets. Based on Fanuc software, OptiStak quickly optimizes pallet configurations and enables operators to change patterns on the fly.

“They have been turnkey, out of the box, minimal programming that we needed to do on our end, and super, super successful on creating consistencies throughout our plant,” Waldo says.

Tasteful Selections also employs state-of-the-art production technology. To maintain high standards of quality, flavor, freshness, size uniformity, and best practices for sustainability, the company owns the entire planting, growing, harvesting, and packaging process. And when it wanted to expand and optimize its potato production, robotic automation was seen as the key.

In just a few years, Tasteful Selections has grown from 100 workers to close to 900. The robotic palletizers have also made a difference in employee accidents and injuries. Previously, workers stacked 50-lb boxes onto pallets up to 92 in. high, but now the robotic palletizers perform that task. “We were able to come up with a very modular, unique design for our palletizers,” says Justin McHenry, vice president of plant operations for Tasteful Selections. “It’s capable of picking up any one of our boxes in this facility, stacking a pallet as high as will fit in the back of any refrigerated truck, and does all that without requiring any tooling change.”