Supermarket introduces robots to replace warehouse workers, boost efficiency

• By Avi Yemini

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Warehouse workers will be replaced by hi-tech and high-speed robots at the enormous warehouse that occupies an area twice the size of the MCG playing field.

Stock from the automated site will supply 200 Coles stores across Queensland and NSW.

Coles boasted that the new human-free packing and freight system is faster, more accurate, and leads to less stock damage.

The robot-operated warehouse, where will bring down grocery prices, the company boasts.

“In automation, we’re more accurate in products we pick, we have fewer damages, we’re able to build the pallets better,” Coles executive general manager of operations strategy & transformation, Kevin Gunn said.

“The system knows how much it weighs, how big it is, and what the crushability is.”

Mr Gunn said the machinery would pack and sort products without the need for humans to do any heavy lifting, or anything at all.

The supermarket brushed aside concerns about job losses.

“We’ve never had more jobs in Coles,” Coles chief operating officer Matt Swindle said earlier this year.

“We have over 130,000 team members at the moment. It was 117,000 three years ago.”