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The Ocado Group has announced a new suite of “game-changing” innovations for its proprietary Ocado Smart Platform (OSP) to help it compete with its rivals for rapid grocery delivery.
The latest innovations include: the “world’s lightest and most efficient” grocery fulfilment bot; “dramatically lighter” grids; robotic arms that pick groceries directly from the grid, a solution that automates the most “physically demanding job” in a Customer Fulfilment Centre; the world’s first virtual distribution centre.
Ocado said this evolution of the Ocado Smart Platform is “one of the most significant steps forward in technology in Ocado’s history” and re-affirms OSP as the “fastest, most flexible, most sustainable and most cost effective suite of solutions for operating online grocery businesses”.
While Ocado said it does not expect these initiatives to have a “material impact” on FY22 results, It does expect the move to eventually offer higher returns from lower capital costs and operating expenses, an even greater Total Addressable Market available to the business, and the “acceleration in the sign-up of new partnerships in the years to come”.
As quoted by The Times, Tim Steiner, chief executive and co-founder, said the new robotic pickers meant that groceries “could now be plucked straight from the warehouse grids using machine vision and artificial intelligence”.
He also added that Ocado could now quicken the roll-out of warehouses and utilise the technology to serve “different types of customers, not just supermarket clients”.
