Coles is preparing to significantly overhaul its online grocery shopping platform through a new partnership with British online supermarket Ocado.
Through an exclusive services agreement, Coles will bring Ocado Group's grocery platform and automated fulfilment and home delivery solutions to the Australian market.
Currently, staff at Coles pick grocery items for home delivery from Coles supermarkets.Ocado's warehouses, in contrast, are operated by groups of small robots, which pick grocery items from vertical stacking systems and load them into customer's order boxes
Coles says it will pay Ocado to provide multi-temperature, automated, robot-driven fulfillment centres in Sydney and in Melbourne and that this will double its home delivery capabilities and boost online sales by $1 billion.
Coles will spend $130 million to $150 million over the next four years setting up the new warehouses, including fees paid to Ocado.
“Ocado is singularly focused on online grocery shopping, and as a result, has become the leading solution provider in the world,”Coles CEO Steven Cain said. “We are delighted to be partnering with them to make life easier for Coles’ customers here in Australia.”
Coles' decision to strengthen its online shopping service with Ocado follows recent moves to improve home delivery grocery shopping through partnerships with eBay as well as UberEats.
“Ocado’s ongoing investment and retail partnerships around the world will help us continue to improve our offer into the future,” Cain said.
Ocado works with other supermarket groups around the world including Kroger in the US, Marks and Spencer and Morrisons in the UK, Casino in France, Sobeys in Canada, and ICA Group in Sweden.
