Ocado partners with US grocery giant Kroger on robotic arm rollout
Ocado has ramped up its partnership with US grocery giant Kroger to bring in a wave of automated technologies across Kroger’s warehouses.
Ocado’s share price spiked 6.6 per cent this morning on the news.
Kroger has placed an order to install Ocado’s latest ‘Re:imagined’ technologies across multiple existing and future warehouses.
The technologies include proprietary Ocado innovations such as On-Grid Robotic Pick, a robotic arm installed directly onto the warehouse’s grid that packs customer bags using advanced machine vision and sensing capabilities.
At full capacity, the robotic arms are expected to pick more than 70 per cent of what is available to purchase on an online order.
Another technology coming from Ocado is Automated Frameload, which loads prepared customer orders onto delivery frames ready for dispatch, using computer vision to examine the frame and push bags while making real-time adjustments.
Delivering robots to Kroger is the latest in a raft of recent distribution network improvements from Ocado’s partners, with AEON in Japan recently announcing it will also retrofit Ocado’s On-Grid Robotic Pick technology into its existing operations.
Tim Steiner, CEO of Ocado Group, said: “We are delivering a step-change in warehouse automation and new levels of efficiency to our partners as global supply chains are under significant pressure to manage higher volumes and greater complexity, as well as challenges in labour cost and availability.
“Today marks another exciting milestone in our partnership with Kroger. Our current customer fulfilment centres (CFCs) are already helping to deliver a game-changing quality of service to their customers across the USA. We are excited for these latest technologies to further enhance that proposition, as well as the efficiency of Kroger’s operations in live and future CFCs.”