Robots to change the way you shop at Coles
Supermarket giant Coles has announced a major technological change coming to stores that could revolutionise how you shop.
Business
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A robot will soon be picking your online order at Coles.
The supermarket giant has announced a deal with a UK automated warehouse and online grocery delivery specialist to build two robot powered “customer fulfilment centres” to process online orders.
The centres, to be located in Melbourne and Sydney, will be up and running by 2023.
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They will be located in the metropolitan areas of those cities and serve surrounding higher density suburbs.
They will be built under a partnership Coles has struck with English online supermarket specialist Ocado.
Coles will access Ocado’s specialist technology to build two “multi-temperature, highly automated customer fulfilment centres”, the Aussie supermarket chain announced this morning.
The centres use hundreds of small robots to pick fresh and dry grocery items from a grid of shelves, loading them into customer ordering boxes ready for delivery.
Coles will also begin to use Ocado’s software to operate its website.
It will continue to use its own vans and drivers.
The new warehouses will process between $500 million to $750 million in online orders a year, Coles said.
Online orders at Coles are currently filled by staff at individual supermarkets.
It has also built two “dark stores” where picking teams pack online orders.
Analysts have questioned whether grocers such as Coles and Woolworths can make money from grocery home delivery.
Coles chief executive Steven Cain said the new partnership with Ocado would provide customers with a greater range of online goods, improved availability and freshness and more delivery times.
“From a customer point of view they will experience a greater range … the availability is better, the freshness of product is better and we will be able to offer more delivery windows as well,” he said.
Mr Cain said the hi-tech centres would also lower the cost of processing online orders.
“Whist Coles online is growing online significantly it is a break-even business currently,” Mr Cain said.
“What we are looking to do here is to drive sales and reduce our cost of doing business.”
Coles said the new investment would not result in redundancies with impacted staff to be switched into different roles.
Coles will pay Ocado $130 million to $150 million to set up the centres and its new website.
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