When one of Weetabix's private label customers wanted the company to produce sugarcoated flakes, Weetabix decided it was time to enter the world of automation. A multinational company headquartered in the UK, Weetabix manufactures its own brands of cereal (Weetabix and Alpen) and processes recipes for nearly 100 brands of cereals for the Canadian, American and British markets. Specifically, the company wanted to automate its material handling processes at its Cobourg, Ontario plant. The existing method was a laborious process-workers lifted extremely heavy sacks filled with granulated sugar and poured them into a blender.