Ocado has opened its first mini CFC

The new 150,000 sq ft facility in Bristol is a quarter of the size of Ocado’s Erith CFC, has the capacity for over 30,000 orders per week and will support around 815 jobs when it is operating at peak capacity.

The Bristol mini-CFC offers local customers shorter lead times for delivery, while opening up more capacity.

CFCs in Purfleet and Andover (85,000 and 60,000 orders per week, respectively, when at peak capacity on pre-Covid basket sizes) remain on track for opening in Q4 2021. Once all three new sites are fully ramped up, Ocado Retail will have increased capacity by 40% compared with 2020. Prior to the Bristol facility opening, Ocado Retail has been delivering c. 374,000 orders per week from Ocado.com.

Ocado Retail has another mini CFC planned for go-live in H1 2022 in Bicester, while Ocado partner Kroger is currently constructing a mini CFC which will open in Romulus, Michigan at a similar time.

Ocado Solutions CEO Luke Jensen, commented: “Grocery boardrooms worldwide are wrestling with the question of how to build online capacity that not only meets the growth in demand they have seen in the past year, but that also serves that demand profitably and flexibly in the long term, with a better customer offering than competitors.

“This mini CFC underlines the flexibility Ocado’s solutions bring to our partners, complementing the scaled benefits of Ocado Retail’s larger sites and shortening the order lead times available to customers in Bristol. We look forward to the next Mini go live in the UK with Bicester, and the first in North America with Kroger, in Romulus, Michigan.”