Ahold Delhaize will roll out small, automated warehouses to speed up order picking and cut delivery times, as it revamps its e-commerce business in response to rising competition, reports Reuters. The company will automate order collection at mini "robot supermarkets" attached to the stores of its U.S. chains like Stop & Shop by teaming up with Takeoff, a startup which builds small warehouses that stack groceries to save space and use robot arms to assemble shoppers' orders. This will mark the end of Ahold's previous strategy of relying more on manual labor at bigger warehouses, or on a mixture of man and machine, to meet online food orders. The warehouses serve as condensed supermarkets that can supply several stores with click-and-collect orders and cost about $3 million to build, which Takeoff says is less than the cost of a typical store revamp. Ahold Chief Executive Frans Muller confirmed the deal on Wednesday and said it should help expand online faster and at a lower cost than with standalone warehouses, according to the report. Full Story
Related: Ahold's Jacqueline Ross: Scouting Out Specialties; Albertsons Tests 'Hyper-local' AI Fulfillment Center.
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