Enterprise
Kawasaki Robotics Debuts CP110L Palletizer in North America at PACK EXPO 2026
The 110 kg robot is rated for up to 2,200 cases per hour and brings the first hollow-wrist design in its payload class to a market that's been short on compact high-throughput options.
Mainstay Communications Team · · 3 min read
In brief
Kawasaki Robotics introduced the CP110L palletizing robot to North American buyers at PACK EXPO International 2026 in Chicago, October 18 to 21. The four-axis machine carries a 110 kg payload and tops out at 2,200 cases per hour under specified operating conditions. It's the first robot in the 110 kg palletizing class to use a hollow wrist, and it extends Kawasaki's CP Series downward from 180 kg to 110 kg, filling a gap that packaging facilities with tight ceiling clearances and limited line-end floor space have had few options to fill.
The Launch
Kawasaki Robotics showed the CP110L live at booth N-5933 at McCormick Place. The PACK EXPO debut marked the robot's formal entry into the US market: Kawasaki's parent company, Kawasaki Heavy Industries, had announced the model globally on February 16, 2026, but North American availability came with this show.
The booth also featured an R Series case-packing solution built around the RS013N robot, designed and integrated by Design For Making. Both systems ran in motion during the show.
The Robot
The CP110L is a four-axis palletizing robot with a 110 kg payload and a maximum reach of 2,505 mm. Kawasaki rates it at up to 2,200 cases per hour under a defined reciprocal motion cycle: a 400 mm vertical rise, 2,000 mm of horizontal travel, and a 400 mm descent, with a combined load of 60 kg including end-of-arm tooling.
Physical specs: 820 kg robot mass, 2,242 mm minimum ceiling clearance, 453 mm revolute-axis interference radius, and ±0.05 mm positional repeatability. The ceiling-height figure is a practical filter for many US packaging facilities. Older production buildings and some factory additions cap out at clearances that eliminate standard-class palletizers.
The engineering distinction is the hollow wrist. Cables and hoses run through the interior of the arm rather than outside it, which Kawasaki says reduces wiring time at installation and limits wrist interference during operation. The company describes it as the first such design in the 110 kg palletizing class.
The CP110L also includes a standard power-regeneration function that captures energy during deceleration and returns it to the electrical system. Palletizing cycles involve frequent vertical movement in both directions, and Kawasaki says the cumulative energy recovery is meaningful at production-scale duty cycles.
Who It's For
Paul Marcovecchio, Director of General Industries at Kawasaki Robotics (USA), tied the product squarely to a common site-survey problem: the CP110L "gives customers another way to increase palletizing capacity without assuming they have unlimited floor space or ceiling height."
The target buyer is a consumer packaged goods producer, food and beverage manufacturer, or end-of-line operator running a facility where the available space at the end of the line won't accommodate heavier or taller equipment. The CP110L's 2,242 mm ceiling requirement and compact footprint are the specs that qualify it for sites the previous CP Series floor (180 kg) couldn't serve.
The lineup now runs 110 to 700 kg payload, giving Kawasaki coverage across a wider range of case weights and production rates.
The Market
PMMI, The Association for Packaging and Processing Technologies, produced PACK EXPO International 2026 with more than 43,000 attendees and 2,700 exhibitors across all four buildings at McCormick Place. Palletizing automation drew consistent traffic: it's one of the cleaner automation cases in a facility, with well-understood cycle counts, predictable SKU dimensions, and labor costs that are easy to model.
PMMI's 2026 Robotics in Packaging and Processing report found that 61% of surveyed end users expect to increase their robotics investment over the following 12 months. Palletizing and case packing remain the two highest-adoption application zones, and the constraint that keeps budgeted projects from closing is often installation feasibility rather than ROI. The CP110L addresses that constraint directly.
Sources
- Kawasaki Robotics to Launch CP110L Palletizer in North America at PACK EXPO, PR Newswire
- Kawasaki Launches High-Speed Palletizing Robot CP110L, Kawasaki Heavy Industries Global Newsroom
- Kawasaki Robotics Brings CP110L Palletizing Robot to North America, Unite.AI
- Kawasaki Robotics to introduce CP110L palletising robot for packaging facilities, Packaging Gateway
- 2026 Robotics in Packaging and Processing, PMMI Business Intelligence
Companies mentioned
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