Case Study
How Caraway Tea Company Approaches Automation
Caraway Tea Company, a U.S.-based tea manufacturer, says it is leveraging affordable automation technologies to modernize production lines and improve efficiency.
As a small business operating in a competitive food manufacturing environment, Caraway Tea Company says it has adopted a practical, in-house approach to automation — designing and building custom production solutions using accessible technologies such as microcontrollers and modular components, including systems based on Arduino.
Caraway Tea Company says it has developed purpose-built machines tailored specifically to tea manufacturing. These include custom tea bag counting conveyors that automatically count and stage tea bags for insertion into retail pouches, reducing manual handling and improving packing consistency. The company has also engineered compact machines designed to portion and pack loose tea into small-format pouches, supporting a variety of product configurations.
"Our goal is to be efficient, adaptable and competitive without taking on the cost structure of much larger manufacturers," says Michael Caraway, founder of Caraway Tea Company. "By building our own automation solutions, we can improve throughput and consistency while remaining flexible enough to serve customers with specialized or short-run production needs."
This approach allows Caraway Tea Company to automate targeted steps within its production process —such as counting, staging and portioning — while maintaining hands-on oversight of blending and quality control. The result is a hybrid manufacturing model that combines traditional tea expertise with modern production tools.
Caraway Tea Company says it continues to refine and expand its automation capabilities as part of its ongoing focus on operational execution. By adopting scalable, cost-effective technologies, the company says it can support private-label and co-packing customers with reliable production while remaining responsive to changing market needs.
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