Reducing cost to serve customers is critical to building a scaleable online grocery offering. Warehouses have been increasingly automated as their importance has increased - with Amazon historically being seen as at the forefront of these developments.
Ocado claims "Warehouse automation is one of the key differentiators for Ocado in the online grocery retail market. Our most ambitious project is the Ocado Smart Platform hive we''re building with Ocado Engineering which includes thousands of robots working together to retrieve from storage the groceries comprising a customer order. Over time, more and more of these groceries will be packed by sensor-guided robot manipulators"
Reduced costs, customer response speed and a new business line (the technology itself) to sell to 3rd parties. This has led to a significant uptick in Ocado''s overall corporate valuation - they are emerging as a potential competitor to Amazon''s perceived lead in this space.