Robots take over shopping

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.

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.

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.

The technology can pick 50 items in less than three minutes. Coles will continue to use its own vans and drivers.

Coles processes $1 billion in annual online sales but makes little to no profit from them given the costs associated with picking, packing and delivering the goods.

Online sales represent about 3 per cent of the supermarket giant’s total sales but are growing at 30 per cent each year. Each centre will process between $500 million to $750 million in online orders a year.