As part of the grocer’s apparent online growth plans, Sainsburys has opened a new purpose built online grocery shopping fulfilment centre in Bromley by Bow in London to help meet demand for online grocery orders in the Greater London area.

In a statement Sainsburys said: “Laid out in aisles, like an enormous supermarket, the online fulfilment centre in East London is 185,000 sq. ft. and has the capacity to fulfil 25,000 customer orders per week.

“The chilled picking area alone is ten times the size of an average Sainsbury’s convenience store.  Once Sainsburys colleagues have picked orders from the shelves they are transferred to a giant automated system, the first of its kind in the UK. The automated system operates 1.5km of conveyor belts which can carry over 7,000 crates per hour to Sainsbury’s vans.

“To ensure its fleet of over 160 vans make deliveries on time, day and night, the site has its own fuel pumps and van servicing area.”

Clodagh Moriarty, Sainsburys Director of Online commented: “The additional capacity provided by the centre means that, working with our 30 London stores which pick online orders, we’ll be able to keep up with demand for our service in London, which we expect to double over the next eight years.”

Sainsburys has just completed the acquisition of the Home Retail Group with its speci8fic target of Argos that had just launched its Fast Track same day delivery network across the UK. For the Qatar owned grocery chain, online seems very much to be the way forward.

 
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