The Casino Group had a turnover of 8.9 billion euros in the first quarter of 2018, and has achieved a breakthrough in the e-commerce food by signing a partnership with the British company Ocado. In early June 2018, the company announced the plan to sell its non-strategic assets for a value of 1.5 billion euros over two years, by this The Casino retailer is trying to accelerate its transformation by reducing its debt in France and investing heavily in online food retailing.
One year later Amazon bought Whole Foods for $ 13.7 billion, the Casino Group is positioning itself in the online agri-food market. Indeed, the giant Casino, which owns brands like Leader Price, Proximity, Cdiscount or even the supermarkets Casino, will implement the logistics and commercial technology of Ocado to its most profitable subsidiary: Monoprix.
The cutting-edge technology of the largest pure e-commerce specialized in food in the world would serve to pilot the ship-from-store Monoprix and optimize its delivery times. Indeed, thanks to a revolutionary process using a system of cells, food orders can be prepared in record time (about 3 times less than current standards).
To exploit this technology, Casino has called upon the rental agency developer and developer Premium Argan. The signing resulted in the construction of a new 36,000m² automated warehouse was built in Fleury-Merogis, with a lease period 12 years. This warehouse will be divided into two sections: the first of 18 000m² will be kept as a cold environment and the second of 18 000m² will be kept as a dry environment. This organization will make it possible to meet the food preservation restrictions and will also have a photovoltaic installation to reduce energy consumption bills. The main function of the warehouse located in the Paris region will be to supply the customers of the monoprix.fr site and help Monoprix to “become the omni channel leader of the city center” this is according to an interview with Monoprix President Régis Schultz.
Here is a video presenting Ocado’s technology :
Ocado’s technology is based on an automation process that combine both technology and know-how. Indeed, the system is based on a park consisting of a multitude of lockers stacked in a grid. Inside these grids, there are all kinds of products. A metal grid is superimposed on the grids to allow small robots to move and recover the products through a suction system. This ingenious autonomous mechanism allows the management of the warehouse including solutions with respect to quantities stored, transport flows or mainly food-related constraints of the products. In addition, a non-collision robot system is used to optimize the order delivery process as much as possible.
