Ocado Group (Ocado)
Machinery : Industrial Robot : Piece Picking
As true pioneers of the online grocery market, we’ve blazed a trail through an increasingly digital world, both leading and benefiting from the fast-increasing consumer shift to online shopping. At the heart of it all lies our technological know-how and unparalleled IP. Our combined expertise and capabilities underpin the continued evolution of the Ocado Retail Limited platform, which has seen it become the biggest grocery retailer of its kind in the world. We’re now taking those same unique qualities to help our partners around the world reach similar heights, through our Ocado Solutions business.
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Ocado Group Announces An Agreement To Acquire 6 River Systems
Ocado Group (“Ocado”) is delighted to announce it has reached an agreement with Shopify to acquire 6 River Systems. 6 River Systems is a collaborative AMR (Autonomous Mobile Robot) fulfilment solutions provider to the logistics and non-grocery retail sectors, based in Massachusetts, USA. It was founded in 2015 and developed an Autonomous Mobile Robot product called ‘Chuck’ that provides automated assistance to pickers in a warehouse, working collaboratively with human operators.
Ocado Group successfully raises over £875m to fund future growth plans
Ocado Group is pleased to announce that it has successfully raised over £875m of gross liquidity through an approximately £578m equity placing and a new £300m revolving credit facility (RCF), providing a very healthy liquidity position for the Ocado Group of almost £2.0bn.
This funding secures sufficient liquidity to deliver the requirements of Ocado’s existing and expected customer commitments into the mid-term, with no additional Group financing as the business becomes cash flow positive. This includes funding the Group’s exciting plans to deliver a pipeline of 58 announced Customer Fulfilment Centres (CFCs) to 11 of the world’s leading grocers globally, helping accelerate channel shift online and support over £20bn in partner sales in the medium term. For Ocado Group, fulfilment of these customer commitments underpins a clear path to potential group revenue of £6.3bn+ and group EBITDA of £750m+ in the mid-term.
Ocado showcases 3D printing innovation
Ocado has unveiled a new approach to building the robots in its fulfilment centres, which it hopes will dramatically improve efficiency and reduce operating costs. The company has developed a 600 Series bot, which it said can be built cheaper and is lighter than the current 500 Series bot. According to Steiner, the 600 Series grocery fulfilment bot “changes everything”. Ocado designed the 600 Series using topology optimisation, similar to the technique used in the aerospace sector to make aircraft parts strong but light. It then used additive manufacturing, in partnership with HP, to make 3D prints of the parts required to build the 600 Series.
A remote village, a world-changing invention and the epic legal fight that followed
The twisted tale of the battle between Norway’s AutoStore and the UK’s Ocado for robotic grocery picking supremacy.