Coles has announced a huge change to its supermarkets, unveiling an automated warehouse that will replace human packers with machines.
The supermarket giant has launched Australia’s first automated distribution centre, located in Redbank in Brisbane, where traditional warehouse workers will be replaced with hi-tech and high-speed robots.
The enormous, 35m tall warehouse — with a floor plan twice the size of the MCG playing field — is stocked with supermarket essentials bound for more than 200 Coles stores across Queensland and NSW.
Coles says the automated warehouse will bring down the price of groceries.
In the warehouse, items are placed on trays, which then travel along a conveyor belt.
A sorting and packing system determines the best way to stack those products on the pallet for each grocery store’s order.
When supermarket supplies need replenishing, the pallets are delivered to stores.
It’s all done with the help of a software and robotics system that collects data about each product to determine how items can be processed faster, with more accuracy and with less damage than could be done by a human.
“In automation, we’re more accurate in products we pick, we have fewer damages, we’re able to build the pallets better,” Coles executive general manager of operations strategy & transformation, Kevin Gunn, told Channel 9.
“The system knows how much it weighs, how big it is, and what the crushability is.”
Mr Gunn said the machinery would pack and sort products without the need for humans to do any heavy lifting.
“The automation does much more of that manual lifting that we would’ve done in existing sites. This site will save over 18 million kilograms of lifting every week,” he said.
The supermarket claims the new centre will mean shelves are stocked faster and with more affordable groceries.
Its opening has sparked fears over job losses, but Coles says that won’t be the case.
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“We’ve never had more jobs in Coles,” Coles chief operating officer Matt Swindle told Channel 9 earlier this year.
“We have over 130,000 team members at the moment. It was 117,000 three years ago.”
Though the centre is the first of its kind in Australia, more are on the way. Coles has plans to open a similar warehouse in Sydney next year, followed by two customer fulfilment centres in partnership with Ocado.
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