LONDON : British online supermarket and technology group Ocado said on Monday its first robotic warehouse in Asia, built for Japanese partner Aeon, has gone live.
The warehouse, or customer fulfilment centre as Ocado calls them, has begun taking orders from customers across the Kanto region for Aeon's"Green Beans" brand. Ocado signed up Aeon as a partner in 2019 in a deal that anticipated the Japanese group would have an online grocery sales capacity of about 600 billion yen by 2030 and 1 trillion yen by 2035.“Grocery spend in Asia is set to outstrip every other region of the globe over the next decade, and online remains the fastest growing channel in grocery across APAC," Ocado CEO Tim Steiner said.
Ocado shares are down 34 per cent over the last year but they surged as much as 47 per cent on June 22 after the Times newspaper reported possible takeover interest from Amazon.com.