Coles launches revolutionary customer fulfilment centre in Wetherill Park

A supermarket giant has officially launched a new multimillion-dollar mega-facility in Sydney, promising to transform online shopping for more than five million people using AI and advanced robotics.

Inside Coles’ new mega-facility about to transform online shopping using artificial intelligence and more than 700 robots.

A supermarket giant has officially launched a new multimillion-dollar mega facility in Sydney, promising to transform online shopping for more than five million people using AI and advanced robotics.

Coles has officially opened the doors to its new customer fulfilment centre in Wetherill Park.

It is just the second facility of its type worldwide, following on from the supermarket giant opening its first in the Melbourne suburb of Truganina last month.

The Wetherill Park facility spans a massive 87,000sq m – four times the size of the Sydney Cricket Ground – and can hold three million units of stock while having the ability to process more than 10,000 customer orders per day when running at full capacity.

The centre is part of a $400m partnership with Ocado Group, a global leader in online grocery transformations, and will feature “cutting-edge Ocado technology” including artificial intelligence, advanced robotics and automation to streamline online orders.

Coles Customer Fulfilment Centre at Wetherill Park in Western Sydney. Picture: Toby Zerna

Coles Group says the modern facility will, once fully operational, deliver an enhanced shopping experience for online customers with better availability, fewer substitutions, an increased range of products and improvements in the shelf-life of staples like mince and milk.

Coles chief executive Leah Weckert said the launch marked “a significant transformation of our online grocery delivery service for NSW”.

The Coles customer fulfilment centre at Wetherill Park in Western Sydney. Picture: Toby Zerna

“Across Victoria and NSW, we have already delivered more than 120,000 orders — the equivalent of 5.5 million products — with our customers getting near perfect orders with zero substitutions,” she said.

“This is an incredible result for our customers, and a testament to the world-class Ocado technology.”

The facility features a centralised hub known as “the Hive” operated by a fleet of more than 700 bots capable of fulfilling customer orders containing up to 50 items in just under five minutes.

It also features an artificial intelligence “air traffic” control system to oversee the bots as they operate around the 3D grids.

during a preview tour of Coles' new Customer Fulfilment Centre, Melbourne, Australia on September 10th 2024. Photo by Martin Keep/Coles

Ocado Group chief executive Tim Steiner said online shopping was one of the fastest growing markets in the world.

“As these (customer fulfilment centres) ramp up both here in NSW and in Victoria, Coles Online customers in metropolitan Sydney and Melbourne will get to experience a game-changing difference in the quality of service available online,” he said.

Along with the cutting-edge technology, the Wetherill Park facility will employ more than 1000 team members, including drivers and fulfilment roles, and a fleet of about 200 home delivery vans.

It opens as commercial sectors around Australia begin gearing up for Christmas, which is the busiest trading period of the year.

Coles Group chairman James Graham said the supermarket giant had “made significant strides in using world-class technology to enhance our supply chain”.