Picnic has started construction of its second automated fulfilment centre. The first pile was driven in Ridderkerk on Wednesday for the building, which is to supply groceries to over 200,000 households.
The DC, built by Aan de Stegge Twello, will have an area of 42,000 square metres. It will be equipped with automated sorting, packing and distribution machines, developed by Picnic itself. The building will provide space for more than 200,000 crates to store items, divided over three temperature zones.
Despite the automation, the online supermarket still expects to need plenty of workers in Ridderkerk. Around 800 employees are expected to be able to work at the DC. Picnic is working with the municipality of Rotterdam to fill these jobs, and the supermarket plans to occupy the Ridderkerk location in early 2023.
Automated DC in Utrecht to open in January
Picnic is busy scaling up its capacity. In a few weeks, it will open the doors of its automated DC in Utrecht, the construction of which started in 2019 and cost around 100 million euros. It will employ 1,000 staff after opening. The big difference with Picnic's existing DCs is that employees do not have to walk around the DC themselves. A conveyor system will bring the items to the employees.
Robots in XXL DC Zwolle
Meanwhile, Picnic is also building a 45,000-square-metre DC in Zwolle. Here, the supermarket expects to put plenty of robots to work, even in the frozen food cell. "Employees will then only have to put the bunch of bananas from the stock crate into the customer crate," says co-founder Frederik Nieuwenhuys. Once completed, this DC can also serve 200,000 households.
