Our Story

Over 120 years of automation heritage — and it’s in our name.

Automation is in our blood. Granta Automation’s roots stretch back over 120 years, to a mill in Whittlesford powered by a water wheel on the River Granta — the river that gives the company its name. From those earliest days, the family behind Granta built and ran its own automation, turning the power of the river into working machinery.

That instinct for practical, home-grown engineering never left. Generation after generation, the business designed and built the automation it needed rather than buying it in — and in 2006, that expertise became a company in its own right. Granta Automation was founded as an independent automation specialist, applying more than a century of hands-on know-how to a new challenge: robotic palletising.

Award recognition: In 2025, Granta Automation was named a finalist for the MLR Networks Best Use of Robotics, part of the Supply Chain Excellence Awards.

An independent palletising specialist

Today, Granta Automation is a wholly independent business, based in Linton, Cambridge, and focused entirely on palletising and end-of-line automation. We are a KUKA Platinum partner and a top-tier Yaskawa partner, and we design, build, install and support our own systems — from collaborative cobot palletisers to high-speed compact and fully modular systems, container unloading, depalletising, AMRs and AGVs.

Being the manufacturer, integrator, installer and long-term support provider — all under one roof, in the UK — means the same team is with you from first drawing to years of reliable running. It is the modern expression of the same principles that ran that original mill: build it well, make it reliable, and look after the people who depend on it.

Our values

We didn’t invent our values in a boardroom. We asked our customers what they think of when they think of Granta Automation — and these four words are what they told us.

Achieve with automation

Our core purpose is simple: we help companies and people achieve with automation. By doing that, we help strengthen the heart of the UK economy — and make a positive difference to the working lives of the people who run our systems, freeing them from heavy, repetitive manual handling for more rewarding work.

From a water wheel on the River Granta to robotic palletising lines across the UK and Ireland, the thread is unbroken: practical engineering, done well, that our customers can rely on.