Ocado Retail has commenced operations at its latest Customer Fulfilment Centre (CFC), located in Purfleet.
Purfleet is Ocado’s third CFC to go live in 2021 – and sixth CFC overall – following the reopening of Andover last month and the opening of the mini Bristol CFC earlier this year.
The new CFC is Ocado’s second biggest behind Erith and will help increase capacity to meet demand for online groceries across the UK. Once fully ramped, the site will have the capacity to deliver over 80,000 orders per week and will employ an additional 1,500 people across all areas of the facility.
Melanie Smith CEO Ocado Retail, said: “The opening of our Purfleet CFC is an exciting milestone in Ocado’s journey, enabling us to deliver to more customers than ever before.”
Prior to the go-live of both Purfleet and Andover, Ocado Retail was delivering approximately 356,000 orders per week. Once all three new sites that opened this year are fully ramped up, Ocado said it will have increased capacity by 40% compared with 2020, taking total potential capacity (on a pre-Covid-19 basket) to 600,000 orders per week.
Ocado Retail covers geographies comprising 75% of UK households and investment continues to be made to expand capacity. The build of Ocado’s second mini CFC in Bicester is on track for launch mid 2022 and progress on the roll out of Ocado Zoom sites continues.
