Retail chains believe that ordering food online will become even more common. The S group is also bringing transport robots to the streets of Helsinki, while Kesko has invested millions in a new collection system.
In the basement of the large Citymarket in Ruoholahti, Helsinki, 45 robots zigzag back and forth. They search for products ordered from ten thousand boxes and rush them to the collection stations, where the staff packs the goods and adds large products to the order, for example diaper packages or one and a half liter soda bottles.
Until now, the orders have been collected by hand in the Citymarket store.
Kesko believes that the ten million euro investment in this retail chain’s first automatic food collection system will be worthwhile.
A similar efficient robot-assisted collection system is already in use at Verkkokauppa.com, for example.
According to Kesko, there are many potential new customers, especially families with children, living around Ruoholahti Citymarket in the inner city, Jätkäsaari and Lauttasaari.
– Many customers are also ready to pay for home delivery, so that they can save, for example, two hours a week of their own time to be with their family or for hobbies, says Rajala.
Kesko plans to invest in robot-assisted collection systems in its other large grocery stores as well.
The competitor HOK-Elanto, on the other hand, has been testing transport robots from the Estonian company Starship Technologies since the spring in seven locations in Aleppa, Espoo. Now the black and white robots with big wheels are going to be brought to the streets of Helsinki and Vantaa.
According to the Starship company, the robots have already driven over 114,000 kilometers in Espoo and transported tens of thousands of orders. In addition to Finland, they are used in Estonia, the United States, Great Britain, Denmark and Germany.
The turnover of Aleppo, which uses Starship’s transport robots, has increased.
– There has been considerable growth. You can clearly see that there are customers in the store area who want to use this service, says HOK-Elanton’s Tommi Kortman.
Oda is considering expanding to Lahti, Tampere and Turku
The Norwegian online grocery store Oda, which landed in Finland last February, is also considering expansion.
Oda already operates in several municipalities in Uusimaa, but Lahti, Tampere and Turku are now being investigated. Oda’s highly automated collection center is located in Vantaa, near Helsinki-Vantaa Airport.
Oda does not disclose its exact order or customer numbers, but the fact that Oda’s order application is the 12th most downloaded in the Shopping group in Apple’s app store in Finland and the 8th most downloaded in Google’s app store tells us something about the number of customers.
In Apple’s app store, competitors S group and K stores are ahead of Oda. In Google’s app store, the K-food app is the first in terms of absolute downloads compared to three competitors, and the apps from S stores and Oda have the same number of downloads.
Instead, in the listing of the most popular shopping apps in Google’s app store on Thursday, August 18. in the comparison of these three applications, S-kaupat was first, Oda second and K-ruoka third.
The industry therefore strongly believes in the growth of online grocery shopping.
– In a few years, the share of food online shopping will probably be five percent of the entire grocery store, so in monetary terms it means a market of about one billion euros in Finland, Kesko’s online shopping director Antti Rajala calculates.
According to a value and attitude survey published last week by the business delegation EVA, 51 percent of Finns believe that robotics and artificial intelligence will secure employment in the long term, even if they initially reduce jobs.
_You can discuss the topic until Saturday evening, August 20, 2022, until 11 p.m._
_On 19 August 2022 at 9:25 a.m., the number of app downloads from the Apple and Google app stores was specified._
_August 20, 2022 at 4:30 p.m., the comparison of the absolute downloads of the Google app store was clarified and the listing order of the most popular shopping apps was completed._