At the Plangger organic cheese dairy in the Austrian Tyrol region, a Stäubli six-axis robot is busy de-rinding and coating irregularly shaped blocks of cheese, a demanding job that calls for maximum resilience. The TX2-90 humid environment (HE) is able to withstand intensive cleaning with aggressive detergents delivered by a high-pressure lance — the sort of treatment that would soon spell the end for the average standard robot.
At any one time, up to 650 tons of organic cheese made with milk from Tyrolean hay-fed cows are maturing in the 160-meter-long, 10-meter-high man-made cave of the Plangger cheese dairy in Niederndorf, Austria. The cave, which was blasted out of the rock face in 2015, is crucial to the running of this organic cheese dairy, which prides itself on the production of quality food in harmony with nature.