British online grocer Ocado today presented a long-awaited international partnership after signing up Groupe Casino to use its technology for e-food deliveries in France.
Technology-based Ocado, which has invested in several highly automated warehouses in the UK, has frequently referred to plans for international agreements over the past few years.
Announcing the agreement to develop the Ocado Smart Platform (“OSP”) in France, Ocado and Groupe Casino said the scalable, modular end-to-end solution “is a unique answer to the opportunities and challenges posed by shifting offline/online trends in grocery”.
Groupe Casino’s brands will benefit from this innovative grocery e-commerce platform, firstly Monoprix.fr, which will provide its customers with the largest assortment of food items at the best levels of services and costs.
Under the agreement, Ocado will construct a latest generation, state-of-the-art automated warehouse, including its innovative automated grid storage and robots, and develop best-in-class front-end website functionality, last-mile routing management and big data for real-time implementation.
The agreement sets out plans for the immediate initiation of the development of a Customer Fulfilment Centre (“CFC”) using Ocado’s proprietary Mechanical Handling Equipment (“MHE”) to serve the Greater Paris area, the Normandie and Hauts de France Regions. Construction is expected to take at least two years.
In addition, Groupe Casino and Ocado will consider further development of other CFCs close to other large urban areas.
“Groupe Casino is pleased to announce the agreement with Ocado Group which will allow it to develop an integrated customer and logistics platform, considered the best in the market,” said Jean-Charles Naouri, CEO of Groupe Casino.
“This agreement is a major leap in terms of quality: 50,000 food items will be offered in the first stage to customers in the Greater Paris area with precise and speedy delivery at home and through a platform which makes it achievable to do this profitably.”
Tim Steiner, CEO of Ocado, commented: “We are delighted that Groupe Casino has decided to partner with Ocado Solutions to grow and develop its online food business. We believe that the scalable, modular end-to-end solutions provided by the Ocado Smart Platform will allow retailers such as Groupe Casino to build their online grocery offer in a way that is profitable and sustainable, creating value for customers, suppliers and shareholders.
“We continue to make investments to commercialise our proprietary platform and expect this deal to be one of many successful collaborations with leading retailers to use it the world over.”
