Palletizing Robot Cost | What Moves the Total Is the Gripper and the Infeed

“The robot arm is listed at JPY 5,500,000. So why is the quotation several times that number?” This is the first gap that opens up in almost every palletizing robot project, and it surfaces in the meeting room rather than on the shop floor. The short answer is that choosing the robot fixes only a small part of the total. What moves the money is not payload capacity. It is the gripper, or end effector, and everything upstream that feeds the robot. This article starts from published arm prices and published throughput data, breaks the cost into five layers, and runs a payback calculation on a Thai plant paying the 400 THB per day minimum wage that applies in the Eastern Economic Corridor.

One note on how to read the figures before we start. Every statistic in this article carries a label. Global means it applies worldwide. Japan-specific means it is a Japanese domestic reference price or a value published by a Japanese manufacturer for the Japanese market, and it should not be read as an ASEAN market rate. Thailand-specific means it applies to Thailand only and would have to be re-derived for Vietnam, Indonesia or Malaysia. Assumption means the number is a modelling assumption made in this article and not a quoted price. Prices published in Japanese yen are quoted in JPY throughout, because a silent conversion creates a number that nobody actually quoted. The one place where a conversion is unavoidable, the Thai payback model, states the assumed rate openly and flags it as an assumption.

Why palletizing is chosen as the first robot

When a plant starts looking at automation, the process that comes up first is fairly predictable. It is palletizing, the job of stacking finished cases or bags onto a pallet. Not welding, not assembly, not inspection. There are three reasons, and all three hold up technically.

Reason 1, it is the heaviest thing people lift

Palletizing is one of the few processes where the load a human handles is at its maximum. Fifteen kilograms per case, several hundred to well over a thousand cases per shift. Over a full shift the cumulative load passing through an operator’s lower back reaches roughly 5 to 30 tonnes. Across plants in Thailand and Vietnam alike, what we hear on the floor is that transfer requests and resignations cluster at the palletizing station more than at other stations on the line.

Being the heaviest job also means that the motive for automating it is easy to state. When production engineering has to explain the project to the parent company or the regional headquarters, the sentence “this is the station that injures people’s backs” carries further than any efficiency estimate. That is the single strongest reason palletizing gets picked first.

Reason 2, it is simple and repetitive

Strip palletizing down and it is grip, lift, move, lower, release, repeated. The pick position is fixed at the end of a conveyor. The place position is a calculable coordinate on the pallet. Very little of the cycle requires judgement.

That is exactly what an industrial robot is good at. The inverse is also true. Processes that require judgement, such as visual inspection or handling material with no fixed shape, are not closed out by a robot alone. Palletizing is one of the few processes where the robot’s raw capability translates directly into the result.

Reason 3, it sits at the end of the layout

The third reason is the one that most strongly decides whether the project is feasible at all. Palletizing sits at the downstream end of the line. Put a machine in the middle of a line and you get interference with the stations either side, relocation of existing equipment, and re-routing of piping and cabling. At the end of the line, most of that disappears.

There is a second property. The palletizing station does not have to keep running when the line stops, because it stops naturally once the upstream feed dries up. That means the availability demanded of it is relatively low compared with the rest of the line. As a place to try a first robot, the risk is small.

If you are considering a robot that works next to people rather than behind a fence, read our guide to collaborative robot implementation and safety requirements alongside this one. Palletizing moves heavy loads at speed, so as a rule it belongs to the fenced industrial robot category, and the requirements are entirely different.

Global installations reached 542,076 units a year, with Asia at 74 percent

It is worth placing the market briefly. According to World Robotics 2025 from the International Federation of Robotics, new industrial robot installations in 2024 reached 542,076 units worldwide, more than double the level of a decade earlier. By region, Asia accounted for 74 percent of new installations, Europe for 16 percent and the Americas for 9 percent. More than 700,000 units a year are expected by 2028, with a compound annual growth rate of around 7 percent from 2025 to 2028. All of these are global figures. IFR does not publish a breakdown by country for Thailand or by application for palletizing, so no Thailand-level robot density or palletizing unit count appears in this article.

The message to take from these numbers is not “hurry up”. It is that installing an industrial robot in Asia is no longer an unusual decision. The difference between projects is not whether they automate. It is what is inside the project, and above all how the quotation is read.

Being the first robot is exactly why the quotation gets misread

This is the problem the article addresses. Because palletizing is the first robot, there is no internal precedent. A quotation arrives, somebody judges it on the robot model number and the arm price, the surrounding costs stack up afterwards, and the capex request has to go back through group approval a second time. Or worse, the phrase “that was outside the quoted scope” appears after the contract is signed.

What derails palletizing robot projects is rarely inadequate performance and rarely breakdowns. It is a mismatch in the understanding of what the quotation covers, and that mismatch can be eliminated entirely before the purchase order if you understand the cost structure. The rest of this article opens it up, layer by layer.

What the arm actually costs | JPY 5,500,000 at 180 kg payload and JPY 7,000,000 even at 500 kg

Start with one of the very few published price lists. Most industrial robot makers do not publish prices at all, but the Kawasaki Heavy Industries CP series is an exception where reference prices are public.

Kawasaki CP series reference prices (Japan-specific)

These are Japanese domestic reference prices published by a Japanese source. Delivered prices in Thailand or Vietnam differ once import duty, local margin and freight are added, so treat the table as a structure to learn from rather than a price to budget with.

Looking at those three rows, most people react with “cheaper than I expected”. That is not the point worth taking. The point is that payload rises by a factor of 2.8 while price rises by a factor of only 1.27.

• 180 kg to 500 kg payload is a factor of 2.78
• JPY 5,500,000 to JPY 7,000,000 is a factor of 1.27
• The gap is only JPY 1,500,000

Step by step the pattern is the same. From 180 kg to 300 kg (payload up 1.67 times) the price rises about 9 percent. From 300 kg to 500 kg (payload up 1.67 times again) it rises about 17 percent. Expressed per kilogram of payload, the 180 kg machine works out at roughly JPY 30,556 per kg while the 500 kg machine is JPY 14,000 per kg, less than half.

The first important finding, payload is not what moves the money

The implication of this price structure is plain. Raising payload does not raise the arm price very much. Therefore the variable driving the total quotation is not payload.

This runs against instinct. Specification meetings almost always open with “how many kilograms does it need to lift”. Fifteen kilograms per case, two cases picked at once makes 30 kg, the gripper weighs 60 kg so that is 90 kg, add margin and let us specify the 180 kg machine. That discussion is not wrong, but the money it decides is only a little over a tenth of the total.

For the avoidance of doubt, taking payload margin is still recommended. If JPY 1,500,000 buys 2.8 times the payload, that is cheap insurance against future product additions or a heavier gripper. But it is an argument about cheap insurance. It is not the point where the budget is decided.

Payload ranges across manufacturers

For reference, here are the payload ranges of the series most often used for palletizing. These are manufacturer product specifications and are not market-specific.

All of these are vertically articulated arms, and dedicated palletizing machines are mostly 4 axis types. Unlike a 6 axis general purpose robot they give up wrist tilt, and in exchange they are optimised for vertical and horizontal motion. Palletizing only requires that the load stays level, so 4 axes are enough. Removing axes helps on price, on rigidity and on maintenance at the same time.

The sentence that says “arm price only, system integration is separate”

The source that publishes those reference prices states the following explicitly.

A robot does not run simply because you have bought and installed it. The system design and fabrication that integrate the robot, and the programming of the robot’s motion, also cost money.

That sentence is the skeleton of this article. JPY 5,500,000 is the arm price, and system integration is quoted separately. Obvious as that sounds, plenty of capex requests never draw the distinction. A single line reading “one robot, JPY 5,500,000” goes up to the parent company, and when the real quotation lands the explanation has to start again from zero.

One more figure from the same source. The catalogue cycle rate for the Kawasaki CP is 2,050 cycles per hour with a 130 kg load (Japan-published manufacturer specification). How to read that number is covered later, but the conclusion up front is that it is a catalogue maximum, not the capability of a real line.

The real cost drivers are the gripper and the infeed

So what does move the money? Two things. The gripper, or end effector, and the upstream equipment that feeds the robot.

The gripper changes completely with the shape of the product

Keep the robot the same and change what it picks, and the gripper becomes a different machine.

Bags are a clear step up in design difficulty compared with cases. The contents flow, so the centre of gravity moves, suction does not hold, and the shape changes the moment it is gripped. That forces a configuration where a fork slides in underneath while a plate holds the bag from above. Inevitably the gripper becomes larger and heavier, and the motion becomes slower.

More product variants make the gripper non-linearly more complex

The harder problem is the number of variants. With a single variant you build one dedicated gripper optimised for it and you are done. Real plants almost always run several variants down the same line.

• Case dimensions differ by variant, so the suction pad layout has to be adjustable or split into several vacuum circuits
• Cases and bags are mixed, so one gripper must carry both suction and fork, or an automatic tool changer has to be added
• Weights differ widely, so the suction force sized for the heavy variant crushes or over-lifts the light one

Doubling the number of variants does not double the gripper cost. While the variants stay inside one gripping method the increment is small, and the moment you cross into a second method there is a step change. That is how gripper cost actually behaves. So the question to settle before you order is not “how many variants”. It is “can this set of variants be handled by one gripping method”.

The infeed side costs more than the arm

More than the gripper, it is the upstream equipment that moves the number. A robot is designed around cases that arrive at a known position, in a known orientation, at a controlled interval. Creating those conditions is the job of the infeed.

• Case orienting and metering equipment. Cases arriving in random orientation are turned to a common orientation and spaced at a controlled pitch, using some combination of turntables, pushers and guides.
• Infeed conveyor. It carries cases to the pick position and stops them there reliably. Poor stopping accuracy means the gripper needs a larger grip allowance, which makes the gripper heavier.
• Labellers and coders. If labels are applied to cases before palletizing, the label position competes with the suction position, for the simple reason that suction on a label peels it off.
• Empty pallet dispenser. It takes pallets one at a time from a stack and delivers them to the load position. Unglamorous, but without it somebody carries pallets weighing tens of kilograms by hand, which cancels out half the point of the robot.
• Full pallet discharge conveyor and stretch wrapper. These remove the completed pallet and accept the next one. If they stop, the robot has nowhere to put anything and simply waits on top of a full pallet.

Add those five together and they normally exceed the arm price. In the calculation later in this article, the gripper and the infeed equipment together come to about 3.5 times the arm. Note that the same calculation assumes the plant can reuse an existing labeller, coder and stretch wrapper, and therefore excludes those two items from the investment. A plant that has to buy them new will see the investment rise accordingly. If you are reviewing material flow across the whole plant rather than one station, our article on how to think about AGV and AMR material transport is a useful companion. Connecting the pallet discharge to driverless transport sometimes produces a benefit that palletizing on its own cannot.

“We have chosen the robot” decides only a little over a tenth of the quotation

Putting that together, the conclusion is this.

Choosing the robot arm is the act of setting the ceiling on payload, reach and cycle rate. It is not the act of setting the price. The price is set afterwards, by the gripping method and by how far up the infeed you decide to automate.

If the first meeting with a supplier opens with “which manufacturer and which model would you like”, the order is reversed. What has to be decided first is the list of product variants, the pallet sizes, and the current state of the infeed. Give an integrator those three and a budget-level estimate is possible. Without them, no amount of model selection will make the quotation stand still.

Payload versus throughput | 1,720 cycles/h at 160 kg against 500 cycles/h at 350 kg

Now to capability, where there is another structure that specification reviews routinely miss.

What five Okura models reveal when placed side by side

Okura Yusoki, a Japanese manufacturer of complete robot palletizer systems, publishes throughput and payload for each model. Here are five, as published (Japan-published manufacturer specifications, not market data).

The comparison inside one series is the clearest. The Ai1800II at 160 kg payload runs 1,720 cycles/h, while the Ai1800II-W at 350 kg payload runs 500 cycles/h. Payload rises about 2.19 times and throughput falls by a factor of 3.44, to under a third.

You cannot buy heavy and fast at the same time

The reason is physics. Move a heavy object quickly and inertial forces load the structure. Carrying those forces with stiffness requires mass, and more mass means longer acceleration and deceleration. Within one design philosophy, payload and speed trade against each other.

That feeds straight back into how specifications are written. A requirement that reads “generous payload margin, and maximum throughput” may have no catalogue model that satisfies both. The previous section said payload margin is cheap because the arm price barely moves. True, but the insurance has a price paid in throughput. This is the point where specification reviews collide most often.

But small payload does not mean fast either

One more layer of care is needed. Look again at the table. The A400V has the smallest payload at 100 kg and the lowest throughput at 400 cycles/h. It is designed as a low speed machine.

In other words, throughput is not a dependent variable of payload. It is set by the design intent of the model. An estimate such as “a 200 kg class machine should manage roughly 1,000 cycles/h” does not hold. Capability has to be confirmed from the actual data for the specific model, and that is the practical conclusion.

Catalogue cycles per hour are not line capability

This is the most important paragraph in the section. A published throughput is a maximum under specified conditions. The Kawasaki figure of 2,050 cycles/h with a 130 kg load and the Okura figure of 1,720 cycles/h are numbers of the same kind.

On a real line the rate always falls, for these reasons.

1. Gripper actuation time. Vacuum take-up and release for suction, stroke time for clamps. There is no guarantee that the catalogue cycle fully includes it.
2. Travel distance and stack height. Positions at the far side and the upper layers of the pallet take longer. Averaged over a full pallet the rate falls below the shortest path value.
3. Pallet changeover. While a full pallet is discharged and an empty one is fed in, the robot cannot stack.
4. Part layers. When the top layer is not a full layer, the motion pattern changes and efficiency drops.
5. Upstream stoppages. Product run-outs, label roll changes, film changes on the wrapper. The robot simply waits.
6. Variant changeover. Gripper adjustment, pattern switching and trial stacking when the variant changes.

Putting numbers on effective throughput (all figures below are assumptions)

Let us make it concrete. Every coefficient below is an assumption made in this article, not a measured machine value.

• Catalogue throughput, 1,720 cycles/h (published value for the Ai1800II)
• Assumption 1, the real cycle runs at 75 percent of catalogue because of gripper actuation, travel distance and stack height, giving 1,290 cycles/h
• Assumption 2, out of an 8 hour shift of 480 minutes, a total of 90 minutes is lost to pallet changeover, waiting for empty pallets, waiting for product and variant changeover, leaving 390 minutes, or 6.5 hours of running time

Under those conditions the shift output is 1,290 × 6.5 = 8,385 cases.

Multiply the catalogue value straight through an 8 hour shift instead and you get 1,720 × 8 = 13,760 cases. The difference is 5,375 cases, and the effective figure is about 61 percent of the catalogue-derived number.

The 61 percent itself is an assumption, but the structure is general. Feed catalogue values directly into a production plan and you can overstate output by close to 40 percent. So before the purchase order, align the definition of capability in writing. Specifically,

• for which product weight, which stack height and which gripper does that cycles per hour figure apply
• does it include pallet changeover time or not
• is the guarantee on instantaneous rate, or on total output per shift

The third is the critical one. What you should have guaranteed contractually is effective output per shift, not instantaneous cycles per hour. Leave that ambiguous, write “1,720 cycles/h” into the contract, and any later discussion about underperformance has no ground to stand on.

Stacking patterns, the requirement everybody defers

There is one more requirement that gets pushed to the back of the specification review and then bites afterwards. Stacking patterns.

Around 1,100 standard stacking patterns can be registered

Okura Yusoki states that its robot palletizers can hold around 1,100 registered standard stacking patterns (manufacturer-published figure). At first reading, 1,100 sounds like more than enough. The practical meaning is the opposite. The fact that 1,100 are provided tells you that this many combinations genuinely come up.

Variants times pallet sizes times layer patterns makes requirements explode

At least three variables determine a stacking pattern.

1. Product variant (different case dimensions, weight and crush strength mean a different stack)
2. Pallet size (the T11 1100 × 1100 mm pallet common in Japan, the EUR1 1200 × 800 mm pallet common in Europe, and the customer-specified sizes that ASEAN plants inherit from whichever market they export to)
3. Layer count and height limit (truck bed height, warehouse rack height, load stability)

Suppose 12 variants × 3 pallet sizes × 2 layer patterns (the ROI calculation later in this article assumes only 3 variants, so this is an example of a plant with a wider product range). That alone produces 72 combinations. Who creates those 72, when, and how? A remarkable number of projects reach the purchase order stage without answering that.

Part layers and label orientation are the last problems to surface

Two more issues come up on the shop floor.

• Part layers. When the production lot is not an exact multiple of a full pallet, the top layer is a partial one. How to stack it, tight to one side, centred, or by hand, has to be decided separately from the pattern itself. Leave it undecided and somebody stands at the machine every day after go-live.
• Label orientation. Customers and warehouses often mandate that labels face outward. That constraint attaches an orientation rule to every stacking pattern and narrows the options sharply. And as noted above, you cannot apply suction to a label.

AI-generated stacking patterns, but currently at exhibition and announcement stage

Technology is moving to reduce this burden. However, the information available today is at exhibition and announcement stage, which is not the same as “already routine on the shop floor”. With that caveat, here is what has been shown. Both items are global product announcements rather than region-specific offerings.

Yaskawa Electric exhibited an AI motion generation technology at FOOMA JAPAN 2026. It generates the robot’s path from nothing more than a sample image and an image of the pre-work state. Filling patterns such as spiral and zigzag can be selected from registered patterns, and the stated aim is that “a person on the production floor can build the motion pattern from a sample image sent from head office”.

Doosan Robotics unveiled PalletizHD+ at Automate 2026. Entering the box information and the pallet conditions is enough for AI to generate the stacking pattern automatically.

If this direction reaches practical maturity, the “who builds the 72 patterns” problem changes character. The point implied by Yaskawa’s stated aim, that the people on the floor can build them, matters a great deal to a plant in Thailand or Vietnam. Whether patterns can be created locally in response to shipping specifications sent from the parent company largely determines the operational load after go-live.

But to repeat, this is exhibition and announcement stage information. For a quotation today, the labour of creating stacking patterns should be budgeted inside the integrator’s fee. “AI will make this easier later, so let us allow less for it now” is not an available position.

Breaking palletizing robot cost into five layers

Now to the money. First, split the cost into five layers. This split, and the definition of the investment figure, are fixed here once and are not changed anywhere later in the article.

The five layers

If you intend to outsource the PLC work in Layer 3, our article on outsourcing PLC and control software development covers how to scope it. Palletizing is tightly coupled to upstream conveyor control, so carving out the robot program alone and ordering it separately does not work.

Definition of the investment figure (used consistently throughout this article)

Layer 5 is what confuses cost discussions the most. Is training capex or expense? Do maintenance fees belong in the initial investment? If the treatment moves, ROI numbers stop being comparable. So this article defines it once.

Investment (the numerator of payback) = Layer 1 + Layer 2 + Layer 3 + Layer 4 + the part of Layer 5 that is incurred once at the start (operator and maintenance training, initial spare parts)

Annual operating cost (deducted from the benefit) = the part of Layer 5 that recurs every year (scheduled maintenance, consumables, annual teaching corrections)

Production losses from stoppages are not included in this article’s calculation. Including them would make the benefit look larger than it is. They are recognised separately as a risk.

With this definition Layer 5 is split into an initial part and a recurring part, so nothing is double counted and nothing is left out. Every calculation that follows obeys it.

The five layer breakdown (everything except the arm price is an assumption)

Now the actual figures. The only confirmed value used here is the arm price of JPY 5,500,000 for the Kawasaki CP 180 kg version, which is a Japan-specific reference price. Everything else is an assumption made in this article and will differ from a real quotation. The scenario is Thailand-specific.

The exchange rate is also an assumption. This article calculates at 1 THB = JPY 4.5. That is not a market rate. On that basis JPY 5,500,000 / 4.5 is about THB 1,222,000, so the calculation uses THB 1,220,000.

(Check, 1,220,000 + 4,300,000 + 2,500,000 + 1,200,000 + 480,000 = 9,700,000 THB. Layer 2 subtotal, 1,500,000 + 1,600,000 + 700,000 + 500,000 = 4,300,000 THB.)

Following the same definition, the annual operating cost is THB 300,000 per year (assumption). It covers scheduled maintenance, consumables such as suction pads and filters, and annual teaching corrections.

What to read from this table

The robot arm is 12.6 percent of the investment. Layer 2, the gripper and peripherals together, is 44.3 percent, roughly 3.5 times the arm. Arm plus Layer 2 comes to 56.9 percent, and the remaining 43.1 percent is engineering, installation work and training, in other words hardware that is not the robot, plus human effort. Of that remainder, pure design and programming effort in Layer 3 is 25.8 percent, and Layer 4 contains frames, fencing and panels, much of which can be procured locally in ASEAN.

Back to the opening proposition. At the moment you choose the robot, only 12.6 percent is decided. The other 87.4 percent is decided by the gripping method, by how far up the infeed you automate, by what you ask the integrator to do, and by how thoroughly you build the safety design.

And the argument over the arm price, 180 kg or 300 kg or 500 kg, JPY 5,500,000 or JPY 7,000,000, moves at most JPY 1,500,000 / 4.5, roughly THB 330,000, about 3.4 percent of the total investment. Most of the meeting time gets spent on that 3.4 percent, which is a scene anyone who sits in these reviews will recognise.

ROI in Thailand | a 400 THB per day minimum wage in the EEC and 50 THB per hour

Here is the core of the article. If you install this in Thailand, how long does THB 9,700,000 take to pay back? The conclusion first. As long as you look only at labour savings, it does not pay back.

The Thai labour conditions behind the calculation

First the facts that can be used as confirmed values. All of these are Thailand-specific.

• The Thai minimum wage is not a single national rate. It is set by province, from 337 to 400 THB per day.
• 400 THB applies in Bangkok, Phuket, Chachoengsao, Chonburi, Rayong and Koh Samui. Chonburi, Rayong and Chachoengsao, which are among the main locations for Japanese-affiliated manufacturing, are inside that group.
• 337 THB applies in Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala, the three southern border provinces.
• Importantly, there is no sign of an increase in 2026. The rate is held.

This article assumes a plant in the Eastern Economic Corridor and uses 400 THB per day. On an 8 hour day that converts to 400 / 8 = 50 THB per hour.

That 50 THB per hour is the number that governs automation ROI in Thailand. Import a Japanese, European or North American calculation unchanged and it will be wrong. If your plant is in Vietnam, Indonesia or the Philippines, the same structure applies but the hourly figure has to be rebuilt from that country’s own wage regulations. Do not carry the Thai number across a border.

Assumptions for the calculation (all assumptions unless stated)

Below, the only confirmed values are “400 THB per day and 50 THB per hour” and “JPY 5,500,000 for the arm”. Everything else is an assumption.

• Operating days, 300 per year
• Fully loaded annual cost per operator, 400 THB/day × 300 days × 1.5 (a coefficient covering social security, bonus, overtime and welfare) = THB 180,000 per year
• Night shift labour cost, 1.3 times the day shift = THB 234,000 per year. This figure is given for reference only and is deliberately not used in any case below, because the Case 2 baseline takes the benefit from subcontracting and weekend working rather than from avoided night shift hiring
• Investment, THB 9,700,000 (per the definition in the previous section)
• Annual operating cost, THB 300,000 per year (per the definition, deducted from the benefit)
• Payback years = investment / (annual benefit minus annual operating cost)

The investment definition matches the previous section exactly. The initial part of Layer 5, THB 480,000, sits inside the numerator, and the recurring part of Layer 5, THB 300,000 per year, is deducted from the benefit in the denominator. Nothing is counted twice.

Case 1, labour savings only, about 23.1 years

The most naive calculation first. Two shifts, with two people on palletizing per shift, so four people in total.

• Annual benefit = THB 180,000 × 4 people = THB 720,000 per year
• Annual net = 720,000 minus 300,000 (annual operating cost) = THB 420,000 per year
• Payback = 9,700,000 / 420,000 = about 23.1 years

Twenty-three years. Set against the practical service life of an industrial robot, that does not stand up as an investment decision.

Why it does not pay back, the denominator is too small

The reason is simple. At 50 THB per hour, removing one person releases too little money.

Look at it from another angle. Divide the THB 9,700,000 investment by the assumed fully loaded labour cost of THB 180,000 per person year and it equals roughly 53.9 person years of labour. Replacing four people, even ignoring operating cost, gives 9,700,000 / 720,000 = about 13.5 years. Deduct the THB 300,000 per year of operating cost and you are back at 23.1 years. The fact that the arithmetic works out so cleanly is what makes it uncomfortable.

Now run it backwards. To pay back within five years on labour savings alone, the annual net has to be 9,700,000 / 5 = THB 1,940,000. Add the operating cost back and the annual benefit must be 1,940,000 + 300,000 = THB 2,240,000. Converted into headcount, 2,240,000 / 180,000 = about 12.4 people.

Unless one palletizing robot removes 12 to 13 people, labour savings alone will not pay it back in five years. Not many plants have 12 people on a single palletizing station.

If you want to start by establishing what the current effort actually is, read how to run a labour content stocktake first. Without measuring how many people spend how many hours on this station, you cannot even reach the starting line of this calculation.

Case 2, add operating hours, about 7.8 years

So what makes the payback work? The first lever is adding operating hours.

As long as people do the work, a third shift means a premium on labour cost and real difficulty recruiting. A robot keeps working at night provided the upstream keeps feeding it. This is where a genuinely new source of value appears, production during hours nobody was working.

Fix the baseline explicitly here. Assume this plant currently covers the shortfall beyond its two day shifts using subcontracted volume and weekend working. Unattended night running brings that additional volume back in house. You could instead frame it as “we would otherwise have hired night shift operators”, but you cannot count both at once, because that counts the same demand twice. This is the single easiest place for a business case to inflate, so decide which baseline you are using before you build the numbers.

On top of Case 1, add the following (all assumptions).

(Check, 720,000 + 400,000 + 250,000 + 180,000 = 1,550,000 THB per year.)

• Annual net = 1,550,000 minus 300,000 = THB 1,250,000 per year
• Payback = 9,700,000 / 1,250,000 = about 7.76 years, call it 7.8 years

23.1 years became 7.8 years. Not one baht of the investment or the operating cost changed. The only thing that changed is where the benefit is taken from. Even so, 7.8 years still misses the roughly five year capex hurdle that many Japanese-affiliated manufacturing groups apply. Adding operating hours is not sufficient on its own. That is what this calculation is telling you.

Case 3, replicating on a second unit, about 5.4 years

The second lever is replication. The design, programs and teaching built for the first unit can be reused on the second.

Here is the second unit’s investment, rebuilt (all reduction rates are assumptions).

(Check, 1,220,000 + 1,050,000 + 2,380,000 + 1,250,000 + 960,000 + 192,000 = 7,052,000 THB. The saving is 9,700,000 minus 7,052,000 = 2,648,000 THB, which is 27.3 percent below unit 1. The unit 1 peripherals figure of 2,800,000 THB is 1,600,000 + 700,000 + 500,000.)

Annual operating cost for the second unit is assumed at THB 250,000 per year, because consumables can be bought for two machines together and the maintenance contract can be consolidated into one. The benefit is assumed equal to unit 1 at THB 1,550,000 per year, on the assumption that the same structure of savings is available on the other line.

• Annual net = 1,550,000 minus 250,000 = THB 1,300,000 per year
• Payback = 7,052,000 / 1,300,000 = about 5.42 years, call it 5.4 years

Taking both units together, the picture is as follows.

• Total investment = 9,700,000 + 7,052,000 = THB 16,752,000
• Total annual net = 1,250,000 + 1,300,000 = THB 2,550,000 per year
• Payback = 16,752,000 / 2,550,000 = about 6.57 years, call it 6.6 years

(This is a simple addition assuming both units run over the same period. In practice the second unit starts one to two years later, so the cash flow payback lands somewhat further out.)

The three cases side by side

What this calculation means

The gap between those three numbers is not a difference in robot performance and not the result of negotiating a discount. It is a difference in where the benefit is taken from and how many times the design is reused.

There is also one conclusion specific to operating in Thailand. In a country where the relevant labour rate is 50 THB per hour, a capex request justified mainly on labour savings will not clear group approval. To clear it, the case has to be built on at least one, and preferably all, of the following three.

1. Add operating hours (unattended night running, weekend running, running through the lunch break)
2. Replicate (reuse design, programs and training on the second unit and beyond, and design the first unit from the outset with the second in mind)
3. Put a number on risk and quality (back injuries and lost time cases, collapsed and damaged loads, mis-shipment claims)

The third is the one most often dismissed internally and the one that pays over the longest horizon. Calculate once what a single manual handling injury actually costs, counting compensation, replacement labour, dealing with the labour inspectorate and reporting to the parent company, and palletizing automation looks different.

How to read this calculation carefully

The calculation has limits that should be stated openly.

• Every amount other than the arm price is an assumption. A real quotation moves substantially with the product variants, the layout and the condition of the existing equipment.
• 1 THB = JPY 4.5 is an assumption made for this article and is not a market rate. A weaker yen lowers the effective arm price and a stronger yen raises it. Because the source price is quoted in JPY, this exposure is real and belongs in the risk section of the capex paper.
• The benefit assumptions swing the result hard. Lower the Case 2 benefit by 10 percent, from 1,550,000 to THB 1,395,000, and the annual net becomes THB 1,095,000, which stretches payback to about 8.9 years. Keep the benefit side conservative.
• Production losses from stoppages are excluded, per the definition set earlier. Including them makes the numbers look better and moves them further from reality.
• Assuming the second unit delivers the same benefit as the first is an assumption. A different line normally means different variants and different volume.

None of this invalidates the calculation. It marks the places where you substitute your own numbers. Once the structure is understood, substitution is straightforward.

BOI incentives, Notification 4/2569 and the general efficiency measure are not the same thing

For automation investment in Thailand, incentives from the Board of Investment can shorten the payback. This is also an area where explaining two different schemes as if they were one will cause an argument later. Two schemes in particular get conflated, so they are set out separately. Everything in this section is Thailand-specific.

Notification 4/2569, a measure aimed at the automotive industry

Notification 4/2569 (2569 is the Thai Buddhist Era year corresponding to 2026 in the Gregorian calendar) is a measure covering automation and robot adoption to improve production efficiency in the automotive industry, including HEV and PHEV.

• Published in the Royal Gazette on 31 March 2026
• Content, exemption of import duty on machinery plus a 50 percent reduction of corporate income tax for three years (on the investment excluding land cost and working capital)
• Applications relating to HEV and PHEV manufacturing are accepted until the end of 2027

The essential point is that the scope is limited to the automotive industry. Food, electronic components, chemicals and consumer goods plants are not covered by this measure.

The general production efficiency improvement measure (automation and robotics)

Separately, there is a production efficiency improvement measure that is not limited by industry. For most manufacturers, this is the realistic one to examine.

• Base incentive, 50 percent corporate income tax reduction for three years
• The reduction rate becomes 100 percent only where at least 30 percent of the value of the machinery being upgraded is sourced from the domestic automation industry in Thailand

The second condition is the practical branch point. The level of incentive depends on whether you can meet the requirement of 30 percent or more sourced from the Thai domestic automation industry. For a palletizing robot the structure fits that requirement rather well. The arm may be imported, but Layer 2 and Layer 4, the gripper, conveyors, orienting equipment, frames, fencing and control panels, contain a great deal that can be built inside Thailand.

In the calculation table above, Layer 2 is THB 4,300,000 and Layer 4 is THB 1,200,000 of the THB 9,700,000 investment. In other words, the decision about where things are built can directly affect the level of incentive. That said, what counts as “the value of the machinery being upgraded” and what qualifies as “sourced from the Thai domestic automation industry” are matters assessed case by case. This article cannot state a ratio or an amount as settled fact.

The two schemes side by side

These are two separate schemes. Descriptions such as “the BOI automation incentive gives you three years at 50 percent with duty free machinery” circulate internally and blend the two. Which text applies depends on whether your company sits in the automotive industry.

Confirm before you apply

BOI schemes change frequently and the detailed administration varies case by case. This article carries only the headline points of published information. Eligibility, the level of incentive and the required documents must be confirmed in advance with BOI or with a qualified adviser. These three points in particular should not go into an internal paper without confirmation.

• which measure your industry and product fall under
• what is counted in “the value of the machinery being upgraded”
• how the Thai domestic sourcing ratio is calculated and evidenced

For how to assemble the investment plan as a whole, see our factory automation roadmap for Thailand. Whether you present palletizing as a standalone project or as one element of a plant-wide automation plan also changes how the incentive application is designed.

Ten items to settle on paper before you order

Everything above now becomes a pre-order checklist. Request a quotation with these ten items unfilled and the price will move afterwards, without exception. Fill them in and you can take comparable quotations from several integrators on the same basis.

1. The product variant list for the gripper

Variant names are not enough. List the external dimensions of each variant (length × width × height), the weight, the packaging form (corrugated, bag, tray, can) and the surface condition (tape position, flaps, labels). This is the input that moves cost more than any other. Add variants expected to be introduced in future, as far as they are known.

2. Pallet sizes, layer counts and height limits

List every pallet size in use and decide, for each one, how many layers and what the maximum height in millimetres is. Note where each constraint comes from as well, truck bed height, warehouse rack height, customer requirement. That makes later change requests far easier to handle.

3. How part layers are handled

When a lot is not an exact multiple of a full pallet, what happens to the top layer? Stack it tight, centre it, have a person place it by hand, or plan production so that part layers never occur. Go live with this undecided and somebody will be standing at the machine every day.

4. How empty pallets are supplied

Who supplies empty pallets, and how? An automatic dispenser, or a forklift dropping a few at a time? Removing the dispenser lowers the initial cost but leaves the manual work in place. This is the classic cause of “we installed a robot and headcount did not fall”.

5. The definition of capability (effective cycles/h and output per shift)

As covered above, define effective output per shift in writing rather than catalogue cycles per hour. For which variant, at which stack height, including or excluding pallet changeover time. Make total output, not instantaneous rate, the parameter that is contractually guaranteed.

6. The scope of fencing and light curtains

How much of the safety scope is inside the quotation? Fencing, light curtains, door interlocks, emergency stops, and the execution and documentation of the risk assessment. The pallet discharge opening is the boundary between people and machine, so the safety design there is the most involved part. If the quotation says nothing more than “safety measures, one lot”, insist on the breakdown.

7. The language of teaching and documentation, and who gets trained

The display language of the teach pendant, the language of the operating manual, and the language in which training is delivered. Decide these at purchase order stage, not after delivery, because retrofitting a language into a pendant and a document set is chargeable work. In a Thai plant, Thai-language operating instructions are what keep the line running, and in a Vietnamese plant, Vietnamese. Alongside that, the group normally needs an English document set so that regional headquarters and any sister plant can read the same specification. Japanese-language material may also be needed for expatriate staff. Also settle who is trained, how many people and for how many hours, and specifically whether the maintenance technicians and the shift leaders are both covered.

8. How the cost of adding a variant is determined

When a new variant is introduced after go-live, what does it cost? Fix this at contract stage or every addition becomes a fresh quotation and a fresh approval cycle. The practical approach is to agree a rate card, along the lines of “adding a variant within the same gripping method costs X, adding a pattern only costs Y”.

9. The scope of maintenance and spare parts

Frequency and content of scheduled maintenance, response times, the list of spare parts to hold and where they are held. Spares for the arm itself, servo motors, gearboxes and cables, can have long lead times. Separate what you hold and what the integrator holds. In the calculation above, initial spares sit in the investment while scheduled maintenance and consumables sit in the annual operating cost.

10. The point of contact after go-live

When something goes wrong, who do you call? The manufacturer’s head office abroad, the local distributor, or the integrator? In which language? With what response time? Whether there is a support base inside the country has a direct effect on uptime. If the configuration means parts have to be shipped in from overseas, a single fault can stop the line for days or weeks.

Three more points if you operate plants across ASEAN

The ten items above apply to a single site. If you run more than one plant across Thailand, Vietnam and the rest of the region, three further points decide whether the project lands on schedule.

Line up the group capex calendar with the installation window

Installing a palletizer means stopping the end of the line for a period, so the physical work is normally scheduled into a plant shutdown. In Thailand that means Songkran in April or the year end break. In Vietnam it means Tet, which falls in late January or February. These windows are fixed by the calendar and cannot be moved.

Group capex approval, on the other hand, runs on the parent company’s fiscal calendar, which is often a different rhythm entirely. The failure mode is familiar. Approval clears just after the shutdown has passed, the equipment arrives, and it sits in the warehouse until the next window. Working backwards from the installation window to the approval date, and then to the date the specification has to be frozen, is the schedule that matters. If the answer is that you have missed this year’s window, it is better to know that at the start than after the purchase order.

Write one specification with a common technical core plus country annexes

If two or more plants will eventually install the same kind of equipment, resist writing a separate specification for each country from scratch. Write one document with a common technical core covering the gripping method, the definition of effective output per shift, the stacking pattern requirements, the safety design philosophy, the required documentation set and the terms for adding variants. Then attach a country annex for each site covering the things that genuinely differ, electrical supply and plug standards, local regulatory conformity and inspection practice, the language of the pendant and manuals, the shutdown window, and local sourcing requirements where an incentive scheme depends on them.

The benefit is not only in drafting effort. It makes quotations from different countries comparable, because the technical core is identical, and it is what makes the Case 3 replication saving achievable in practice rather than in theory. A second unit is only cheap if the second specification is genuinely the first one again.

Screen integrators with questions that have to be answered in writing

Selecting a system integrator on presentation quality alone is a slow way to find out what the company can do. A small number of written questions separates the field quickly.

• Ask them to state in writing how they define effective cycles per hour, including whether pallet changeover time is inside or outside the figure, and at what stack height and product weight it applies. An integrator who has commissioned real lines answers this immediately.
• Ask for a redacted example of a risk assessment from a previous palletizing project, with the customer’s identity removed. What you are checking is whether they produce safety documentation as a matter of course, not whether the example is impressive.
• Ask who actually performs the teaching and the commissioning, whether they are local engineers or flown in, and in which language they work with your operators.
• Ask what support exists in country after go-live, the response time, and which spare parts they hold locally.
• Ask how variant additions are priced, and whether they will put a rate card in the contract.

None of these questions requires you to have chosen a robot model first. That is the point. They test the part of the project that actually consumes the budget.

Frequently asked questions about palletizing robots

How much does a palletizing robot cost

The arm price and the total system cost have to be treated as different questions.

For published arm prices, the Kawasaki Heavy Industries CP series is one example. The 180 kg version is JPY 5,500,000, the 300 kg version JPY 6,000,000 and the 500 kg version JPY 7,000,000, as Japan-specific domestic reference prices. What deserves attention is that payload rises 2.78 times while price rises only 1.27 times, which means payload is not the main driver of the total system cost. (The arm price itself does move with payload, but the swing is small relative to the total.)

The total system cost is a different matter. As the source itself states, “a robot does not run simply because you have bought and installed it. The system design and fabrication that integrate the robot, and the programming of the robot’s motion, also cost money.” In other words, system integration is not inside the arm price.

In this article’s calculation, in which everything except the arm price is an assumption, the arm is 12.6 percent of a THB 9,700,000 investment while the gripper and peripherals are 44.3 percent. So to answer “how much is a palletizing robot”, you need the product variant list and the pallet sizes. With those two, a budget-level direction can be given.

What is the difference between a palletizer and a palletizing robot

The practical framing is that a palletizer is the general term for a machine that stacks onto pallets, and a palletizing robot is one form of it.

Conventional mechanical palletizers typically accumulate a full layer of cases and then push the whole layer onto the pallet. For running large volumes of a fixed product they are highly efficient, but changing the product or the pattern requires mechanical changeover.

A robot palletizer instead uses a vertically articulated robot, mostly a 4 axis type for palletizing duty, to pick one or a few pieces at a time. Because changing the stacking pattern is a matter of selecting a program, the ability to handle a wide product range is far better. Okura Yusoki states that its robot palletizers can hold around 1,100 registered standard stacking patterns.

On capability there is a wide spread depending on the design intent of the model. From the same manufacturer’s published values, the high speed Ai1800II runs 1,720 cycles/h at 160 kg payload, the high payload Ai1800II-W runs 500 cycles/h at 350 kg, and the low speed A400V runs 400 cycles/h at 100 kg. Higher payload does tend to mean lower throughput, but the reverse relationship, that small payload means fast, does not hold.

Can the same machine do depalletizing

The motion looks like palletizing in reverse, but treating it as a separate requirement is the safer assumption.

In palletizing, the items to be stacked arrive from upstream at a known position in a known orientation. The pick position is known. In depalletizing, the pallet in front of the robot is not necessarily stacked the way you expect. It has shifted in transit, the orientation alternates by layer, or the pallet is mixed. All of these are ordinary occurrences.

Depalletizing therefore adds requirements, a means of recognising the stack condition such as vision, and a gripper that can accommodate misalignment. Even if the same robot hardware can be shared, the requirements, the cost and the commissioning period cannot be assumed identical to palletizing. When you request a quotation, ask for palletizing and depalletizing to be quoted separately.

Is automating bags harder than boxes

Yes, and the reason lies in the gripping method.

With corrugated cases you can generally get by with a choice between vacuum suction on the top face and clamping on the sides. Bags of powder or granules are different. The contents flow, so shape and centre of gravity are unstable and vacuum suction does not hold. That forces a configuration where a fork slides in from below while a plate presses from above, which makes the gripper larger and heavier and the motion slower.

Stability after stacking is a further issue with bags. Alternating the orientation by layer, or shaping the stack with press plates, may have to be added.

From a quotation standpoint the biggest branch point is whether boxes and bags run on the same line. Because the methods differ, you must either build one gripper that handles both, add an automatic tool changer, or separate the lines. That decision creates the step change in cost. This is exactly the structure behind the earlier statement that grippers become non-linearly more complex as variants increase.

What is the lead time for an installation in Thailand

This article does not state a number of weeks. Lead time varies substantially with the product variants, the design difficulty of the gripper, the extent of infeed modification, arm availability, and the timing of a BOI application if an incentive is being used. Put an unsupported standard lead time into an internal document and it will be wrong later.

Instead, here are the factors that determine it.

• Gripper design and fabrication. Work cannot start until the variants are fixed. Nothing moves here until checklist item 1 is filled in.
• Extent of infeed modification. Modifying existing conveyors is constrained by how long production can be stopped, which in practice means aligning with a long holiday shutdown.
• Creating stacking patterns. Effort is generated for every combination of variants, pallet sizes and layer counts, and each has to be created and verified. At 12 variants × 3 pallet sizes × 2 layer patterns that is 72 combinations.
• Safety conformity and risk assessment. Documentation and corrective work can take time.
• BOI application. If an incentive is used, the timing of machinery import has to be aligned with the application.

The practical advice is that the day you freeze the variant list and the pallet sizes is the real start of the lead time. Every day of delay there is a day of delay overall.

What does it cost to add a product variant later

The order of magnitude depends on whether the new variant fits the existing gripping method.

If the dimensions, weight and packaging form are within what the existing gripper can pick, all you need is an additional stacking pattern and teaching. The cost is comparatively small. Adding a variant that crosses into a different gripping method, such as introducing bags onto a line that only handled boxes, requires a new gripper design or an automatic tool changer, and the cost is in a different class.

That is precisely why we recommend agreeing checklist item 8, the pricing of variant additions, as a rate card at contract stage. Fix “adding a variant within the same method costs this, adding a pattern only costs that” in advance and you stop having to run a quotation and an approval cycle every time.

On the burden of creating stacking patterns, the technology trend does point towards relief. The AI motion generation technology Yaskawa Electric exhibited at FOOMA JAPAN 2026 generates the robot’s path from a sample image and an image of the pre-work state, with the stated aim that “a person on the production floor can build the motion pattern from a sample image sent from head office”. Doosan Robotics unveiled PalletizHD+ at Automate 2026, where entering box information and pallet conditions is enough for AI to generate the stacking pattern automatically. However, both are at exhibition and announcement stage and cannot be built into the assumptions behind a quotation today.

Summary

This has been a long article, so here it is reduced to what you can act on.

• Palletizing is chosen as the first robot because three conditions coincide, heavy loads, simple repetition, and a position at the end of the layout. It is also the process where trouble over quotation scope is most likely, precisely because there is no internal precedent.
• The arm price barely moves with payload. Kawasaki CP, JPY 5,500,000 at 180 kg, JPY 6,000,000 at 300 kg, JPY 7,000,000 at 500 kg, as Japan-specific reference prices. Payload up 2.78 times against price up 1.27 times, a gap of JPY 1,500,000. Payload is not the variable that moves the money.
• The gripper and the infeed move the money. In this article’s calculation, where everything except the arm is an assumption, the arm is 12.6 percent of a THB 9,700,000 investment and the gripper and peripherals are 44.3 percent, about 3.5 times the arm. At the moment you choose the robot, only 12.6 percent is decided.
• Payload and throughput trade off. From Okura Yusoki’s published values, the Ai1800II at 160 kg runs 1,720 cycles/h and the Ai1800II-W at 350 kg runs 500 cycles/h. You cannot buy heavy and fast at the same time. But as the A400V shows at 100 kg and 400 cycles/h, small payload does not mean fast either.
• Catalogue cycles per hour are not line capability. With the assumptions used here, effective output was about 61 percent of the catalogue-derived figure, 8,385 cases against 13,760. Have the contract guarantee effective output per shift, not instantaneous rate.
• Stacking pattern requirements explode. Around 1,100 standard patterns can be registered. Even 12 variants × 3 pallet sizes × 2 layer patterns is 72 combinations. AI pattern generation is at exhibition and announcement stage and cannot be assumed in a quotation today.
• Split the cost into five layers and define the investment figure once. Here, Layer 5 was split into an initial part (inside the investment) and a recurring part (deducted from the benefit as annual operating cost), and stoppage losses were excluded. Holding that definition steady is the precondition for comparing ROI at all.
• In Thailand, labour savings alone do not pay it back. The minimum wage is set by province from 337 to 400 THB per day, and there is no sign of an increase in 2026. The EEC provinces assumed here are on 400 THB per day, which is 50 THB per hour. Case 1, labour only, came to about 23.1 years. Case 2, with added operating hours, still came to about 7.8 years. Case 3, the replicated second unit, came to about 5.4 years, and both units together to about 6.6 years. Adding hours alone does not reach a five year hurdle. Only when replication is built in does the project come into range. To hit five years on labour savings alone, one unit would have to remove about 12.4 people.
• Do not conflate the two BOI schemes. Notification 4/2569 is for the automotive industry including HEV and PHEV, published in the Royal Gazette on 31 March 2026, with machinery import duty exemption and a 50 percent corporate income tax reduction for three years, and HEV and PHEV applications accepted until the end of 2027. The general production efficiency measure gives a base 50 percent reduction for three years, rising to 100 percent only where at least 30 percent of upgraded machinery value is sourced from the Thai domestic automation industry. Confirm with BOI or a qualified adviser before applying.
• Ten items to settle on paper before ordering. Variant list, pallet sizes and layer counts, part layers, empty pallet supply, definition of capability, scope of safety measures, language of teaching and documentation, pricing of variant additions, scope of maintenance and spares, and the point of contact after go-live. If you operate across ASEAN, add the capex calendar against the shutdown window, one specification with country annexes, and written screening questions for integrators.

One last time. What moved the payback from 23.1 years to 5.4 years was not a higher performance robot and not a discount. It was changing where the benefit is taken from, and reusing the design on a second unit. And whether the design can be reused at all is decided at the moment you place the first order.

A practical first step is to put your product variant list and your pallet sizes onto a single sheet. Those two are enough to see roughly which gripping method applies and how much of the infeed has to change, which is enough for a budget-level direction. It does not matter if the model has not been selected or the drawings of the existing line are out of date. If you would like a second opinion on a palletizing project, on how the capex case is framed for group approval, or on how the same specification would apply across your Thai and Vietnamese sites, you are welcome to get in touch through our contact page.

References

• IFR World Robotics 2025 press release — https://ifr.org/ifr-press-releases/news/global-robot-demand-in-factories-doubles-over-10-years
• FA Products JSS Division, “Palletizing robots, how they work, manufacturers and reference prices” (Japanese) — https://jss1.jp/column/column_98/
• Okura Yusoki, robot palletizer product page (Japanese) — https://www.okurayusoki.co.jp/product/palletize/robot-palletizer/
• MONOist, “AI generates robot motion from a sample image and a pre-work image”, FOOMA JAPAN 2026 (Japanese) — https://monoist.itmedia.co.jp/mn/articles/2606/03/news050.html
• PKF Thailand, “Bangkok Minimum Wage Rises to 400 Baht” — https://pkfthailand.asia/bangkok-raises-minimum-wage-to-400-baht-what-employers-and-workers-should-know/
• Thairath English, “No Signs of Minimum Wage Increase in 2026” — https://en.thairath.co.th/scoop/interview/2929193
• Tilleke & Gibbins, “Thailand Unveils New Incentives for Automotive and HEV/PHEV Manufacturing” — https://www.tilleke.com/insights/thailand-unveils-new-incentives-for-automotive-and-hev-phev-manufacturing/3/
• Metoree, “51 palletizing robot manufacturers” (Japanese) — https://metoree.com/categories/2080/
• Mujin, “MujinRobot palletizer” (Japanese) — https://www.mujin.co.jp/solution/distribution/palletize/
• JETRO, “Survey of the Thai market environment for food industry overseas expansion, March 2026” (Japanese) — https://www.jetro.go.jp/ext_images/agriportal/platform/th/2026/th_Report202603_2.pdf