‘Excited’: Coles launches $400m Australian online shopping first

The supermarket giant has unveiled an Australian first that will change the nature of online grocery shopping forever.

An Australian first has finally opened its doors and it could change the nature of online grocery shopping forever.

Coles has opened its first Customer Fulfilment Centre (CFC) in Truganina, Victoria, which will cover Ballan in the west across to Bunyip in the east, and from Beveridge in the north down to the Mornington Peninsula.

A CFC has also opened up in Wetherill Park, Sydney, and will cover from Hazelbrook in the west across to Bondi in the east, and from Cowan in the north all the way down to the Bargo.

Essentially, instead of groceries from online orders coming directly from stores, in these areas it will come from the CFC.

Coles' Customer Fulfilment Centre in Melbourne. Picture: Martin Keep/Coles

Leak Weckert, Coles’ CEO, told news.com.au the supermarket chain was “very excited” about this new development — the first of its kind in Australia.

“We do really think it will transform what the customer can expect from an online order,” she said, saying there were three major things that will change for customers getting orders from CFCs.

“The first thing is that we will have much higher rates of what we would call ‘the perfect order’, that means that the customer gets every product that they’ve ordered and they also get their order on time.

“Both of those aspects are really important for a customer order, in our mind, because one of the biggest pain points is you’ve ordered 50 things but you only got 45 of them and one of those things you needed to be able to cook dinner tonight.”

Ms Weckert said the second element that will change is the freshness of the produce, with the supermarket now able to make a “minimum life” promise for items such as meat, milk and fresh produce so customers don’t have to worry when they put in an online order that the meat will be expired in two days.

Coles CEO Leah Weckert spoke about the new CFCs. Picture: Rebecca Michael.

The third big area of change is that there will be a larger range for customers to choose from, revealing when the CFCs opened a handful of weeks ago customers benefited from 20 per cent more products in comparison to in-store shopping.

“Our intention is to build that over time so customers will eventually be able to have double the amount of choice than they have today,” she said.

“It means that we’re also able to trial a lot of new products in those CFCs and if they work really well and are popular with customers then we can range that back into stores as well.”

Robots can now pack your online shop. Picture: Supplied

The CFCs have been created by using Ocado, which is a popular technology in the UK that sees artificial intelligence, advanced robotics and automation to pack groceries.

Ms Weckert said currently a shopper will place an order and a team member will pack it by hand going up and down the aisles with a trolley.

But, in the CFCs, Ocado technology will essentially work as hundreds of robots that are using AI to direct them what products they need to get in order to fulfil an order, saying it allows for the benefits of quicker and more accurate orders. Ms Weckert also revealed that the robots have an in-built temperature monitoring system, meaning freshness is at the forefront of the new process.

Ocado technology will help collect the items. Picture: Martin Keep/Coles

How the items will be stored. Picture: Martin Keep/Coles

But, that doesn’t mean the people element has been completely removed. There are 2000 employees across the two sites, everything from truck drivers, packing products into bags and a number of new roles such as engineers and analytic specialists to look after the technology.

However, CFCs only work in densely populated areas meaning that while they have been created in Sydney and Melbourne, it’s unlikely to see the same model fit in more regional and rural communities.

But, there is still much more room for the current facilities to grow.

“We’ve really built them so we can grow into them. They represent the equivalent of 40 new stores, so it’s going to take us a number of years to really grow into that,” she said.

Ms Weckert said it was a significant capital investment back into Australia, with the two CFCs were $400 million in investment, which in turn created construction jobs, as well as economic value put back into the community.

Originally published as ‘Excited’: Coles launches $400m Australian online shopping first