FTG is a growth market. How is Grote Company helping manufacturers and suppliers adapt?
We want manufacturers to step up and meet this growth. With restaurant prices soaring and more people watching their budgets, prepared food offers a viable alternative to dining out. Consumers lead busy lives, so convenient options are attractive – and that’s where we come in.
Grote supports a wide range of FTG categories, including sandwiches, ready and frozen meals such as cordon bleu, savoury baked goods with sliced meat and cheese, meat snacks and pizza. Our portfolio ranges from slicers and sandwich assembly lines to depositors, pizza topping systems and food-handling robotics.
We’re focused on helping producers automate key processes, improve throughput and remain flexible as consumer preferences evolve.
What’s exciting about automation right now?
Seeing how accessible and impactful automation has become for food manufacturers of all sizes. Today’s technology is transforming the shop floor, allowing production lines to run at higher speeds with greater consistency, while significantly reducing waste and downtime.
We’re seeing layered approaches to automation that allow manufacturers to scale over time.
- Standalone automated equipmentlike slicers, depositors and topping applicators take high-speed, repetitive tasks and precisely execute them all shift long. This allows processors to meet demand, improve consistency and free up labour for other roles.
- Integrated systemstake it a step further, featuring fully connected processes and centralised line controls, allowing processors to free up staff from tedious transfer and repositioning tasks.
- Fully robotic systemstake automation to the next level, working closely with a processor’s integrated process systems to quickly and accurately transfer, position and place products in applications that would previously have required manual handling by staff.
Looking ahead to 2026, we expect continued growth in flexible, scalable automation – solutions that allow manufacturers to respond quickly to changing product formats, labour availability and consumer demand, while building long-term operational resilience.
FTG is no longer just about sandwiches. How do you adapt to consumer expectations for global flavours, fusion, etc?
To keep up with trends, producers must adapt recipes, ingredients and product formats – often within the same production line.
To support this shift, these must be flexible enough to add or adjust ingredients at multiple points in the process. That flexibility is core to how Grote Company designs its equipment. Our solutions enable processors to produce a wider range of products without significant new capital investment.
- Grote sandwich lines can produce multiple formats and recipes on a single line.
- Grote depositors can apply condiments, butter/oil, wet salads, sauces and more across sandwiches, meals and baked goods.
- Our versatile slicers slice meat/cheese/vegetables on the same machine with simple changeovers.
And we work with the leading sandwich and FTG producers in the UK, mainland Europe and US. We expect to deepen these relationships while expanding further into Eastern Europe and Asia.
How do you think AI is changing your sector?
One key area is data analysis. While data is often collected, it’s not always effectively analysed. AI can help uncover insight that can be used to enhance performance.
Rising costs and staff retention are challenging areas. How can you help?
There is no one-size-fits-all solution. That’s why we start by listening and working closely with each customer to understand their specific goals and constraints.
In some cases, processors want to extend the life of existing equipment by repurposing or upgrading older machines. Others need to reconfigure their lines to keep pace with product trends or add automation to reduce reliance on hard-to-fill roles. For some, investing in new equipment is the right next step.
Across all of these scenarios, many manufacturers tell us they value having a single, trusted point of contact. It simplifies project management, reduces downtime and ultimately saves cost when compared to coordinating multiple vendors.