AI camera carton lid inspection

03 June 2026
Focus area: Compliance and industry standards
Program stream: Growth and global competitiveness
Project number: 2025-1039

A project was undertaken at JBS Brooklyn to address a persistent operational problem in the cold store conveyor system.

Meat cartons destined for frozen storage are lidded, while those destined for chilled storage are not. Prior to this project, differentiating between the two relied on barcode scanners reading carton labels. This method was unreliable due to labels falling off, poor print quality, incorrect carton orientation on conveyors, and cartons bunching together preventing scanner visibility.
The project assessed whether the Cognex In-Sight® 2800 AI vision system (IS2801M monochrome camera) could accurately and reliably differentiate between lidded and unlidded cartons on a live production conveyor belt. The objective was to replace barcode scanning with a more robust AI-based vision solution to prevent misrouting of cartons.

Previous in this focus area 05 January 2025 Societal role of red meat - extension project Next in this focus area 31 October 2025 Review of value propositions for a hyperspectral image analysis solution in red meat supply chains