Why card feeding is the first job food manufacturers are automating.
Walk through almost any food factory and you will find the same job being done somewhere on the line: an operator standing beside a flow wrapper or tray sealer, placing cards, trays or pots by hand, hour after hour, shift after shift. It has always been repetitive work. In 2026, the arithmetic behind it has changed.
The labour maths in 2026
From April 2026, the National Living Wage rose 4.1 per cent to £12.71 per hour. That headline rate is only part of the story: once employer National Insurance, pension contributions, holiday cover, recruitment, training and supervision are added, the true cost of keeping one person on a repetitive feeding task is considerably higher than the hourly wage suggests.
Employers have noticed. The Low Pay Commission’s 2025 report found that a significant share of employers expect to respond to National Living Wage increases with automation. The Food and Drink Federation’s latest economic briefing lists rising labour costs and National Insurance among the pressures squeezing food manufacturers, in a sector where confidence remains low and insolvencies have run at record highs.
In its August 2026 statement, the industry called directly on the Government to relieve cost pressures. Manufacturers cannot control the wage floor, energy prices or regulation. What they can control is how many repetitive manual tasks remain on their lines.
Why the feeding jobs go first
When food manufacturers look for automation candidates, packaging feeding tends to come first, for three practical reasons.
First, it is genuinely repetitive. Feeding cards or trays requires an operator to hold position and timing for a full shift, and it is precisely the kind of role that is hardest to recruit and retain.
Second, it is usually a whole job. A manual feeding station often occupies one operator continuously, so automating it releases a full person per shift rather than a fraction of one. One manual packing station across three shifts now costs upwards of £95,000 a year.
Third, the machine does the job continuously. A card feeder does not rotate, take breaks or need cover arranged. The saving repeats every shift the line runs, which is why typical installations achieve payback in under 12 months on a single shift, and under 6 months across two or three.*
Do your own arithmetic
You do not need to take any of this on trust. The calculation is short:
1 operator × hourly employment cost × hours per shift × shifts per day × working days.
Run it with your own numbers in our ROI calculator, and compare the result with the cost of automating the task. For many lines the question stops being what the machine costs, and becomes what continuing to feed by hand is costing every year.
What your people do instead
None of this is an argument against people. It is an argument for using them where their judgement, skill and experience add value, rather than on a task a machine performs more consistently. Manufacturers who automate feeding do not usually lose the operator; they redeploy them to work that is harder to automate and easier to staff.
If the job on your line is card feeding, our F Series card feeder was designed for exactly this. If it is trays, lids or pots, the same arithmetic applies to our denesting, lidding and pot dropping ranges.
Quick answers
How much does manual card feeding cost a year?
Multiply one operator’s hourly employment cost by hours per shift, shifts per day and working days. With the National Living Wage at £12.71 from April 2026 plus employment overheads, a manual packing station across three shifts now costs upwards of £95,000 a year.
What is the typical payback on a card feeder?
Typical PiP installations achieve payback in under 12 months on a single shift, and under 6 months across two or three shifts. Payback depends on application, operating hours, labour costs and machine specification, which is why PiP provides a calculator to run the numbers with your own figures.
Why automate feeding before other jobs?
Feeding is repetitive, hard to staff, and usually occupies one operator continuously, so automating it releases a full person per shift. The machine performs the task continuously, so the saving repeats every shift the line runs.
*Payback depends on application, operating hours, labour costs and machine specification.
Sources: Low Pay Commission Report 2025 (gov.uk); National Living Wage from April 2026, Living Wage Foundation and the Association of Convenience Stores; Food and Drink Federation economic briefing and August 2026 industry statement, as reported by The Manufacturer and Grocery Gazette.