Coles launches Australia’s first Customer Fulfilment Centre to enhance online grocery shopping

Australia’s first hi-tech online grocery shopping processing centre has arrived in Melbourne, featuring hundreds of robots guided by an AI “air traffic control system”. WATCH THE VIDEO

A squad of 700 robots will help pack orders from online grocery shoppers across greater Melbourne, with the opening of a hi-tech facility four times the size of the MCG.

Supermarket giant Coles says its has “changed the online grocery landscape” by launching the Customer Fulfilment Centre (CFC) in Truganina – the first of its kind in Australia – as part of a $400m partnership with British tech company Ocado.

Coles chief executive Leah Weckert said the transition from “a local, store-based fulfilment model to a central, world-class facility” would improve choice, availability, freshness and shelf-life of products, meaning fewer substitutions.

“The Hive” inside Coles’ Customer Fulfilment Centre in Truganina, where a fleet of robots will fulfil a customer order containing 50 items in just five minutes. Picture: Martin Keep/Coles

The bots will move around a giant grid of tubs containing grocery items, picking them up and transporting them to human packers. Picture: Martin Keep/Coles

Delivery to customers – within a catchment zone bordered by Ballan in the west, Bunyip in the east, Beveridge in the north and the Mornington Peninsula in the south – would also be faster and more flexible.

The 87,000sq m Truganina facility can hold three million units of stock and process more than 10,000 orders per day at full capacity – thanks to a fleet of robots the size of dishwashers, able to fulfil an order containing 50 items in five minutes.

Guided by an AI “air traffic control system”, the bots will move around a giant grid of tubs containing grocery items, picking them up and transporting them to human packers, who will complete the orders.

Coles’ Customer Fulfilment Centre in Truganina is the size of four MCGs. Picture: Martin Keep/Coles

A team of 1000 staff will work with robots to pack online grocery shoppers' orders. Picture: Martin Keep/Coles

More than 1000 people will be employed at the centre, which will also house more than 200 delivery vans containing dual compartments designed to keep products fresh.

The CFC – named Brungilo Curran, meaning Stringybark Gum Tree – will feature an on-site bakery, and a section where fresh produce is cut and packaged to order. It will stock specialty foods from smaller, local suppliers like former Flinders Lane restaurateurs Lello Pasta, and an expanded product range across the health and dietary, vitamin and baby categories.

A second Coles CFC will launch next month in Wetherill Park, NSW.