Ocado is doubling the number of robotic arms in its warehouses as it aims to boost the speed of packing grocery orders.
Chief executive of its retail arm Hannah Gibson said that the number of robots with arms at the company’s warehouse in Luton, Bedfordshire, will double from 22 to 44 in “the very near future”, reported the Financial Times.
“This technology enables us to have a bigger choice…lower substitutions, and the operating model is more efficient than a store-based model,” she said.
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Gibson also added that the future will see about half of Luton’s range of 50,000 products handled by robotic arms “in the near term” with an final goal of roughly 80%.
The robotic arms the retailer introduced last year are designed to pick individual products from storage boxes, in comparison to older iterations that retrieved boxes for employees to finish the grocery packing.
The announcement comes amid a profit squeeze for the upmarket grocer, as high interest rates and inflation saw stock plummet by 77% since the pandemic.
Last month, Ocado inked a deal with Canadian healthcare provider McKesson, which saw the online retailer venture outside of the retail sector for the first time.
