Online grocery retailer Ocado has announced that it has opened its first mini customer fulfilment centre (CFC) in Bristol.

The new site has the capacity for over 30,000 orders per week and will create 815 when it is operating at peak capacity.

Ocado said that the mini CFC format is an important part of its fulfilment “ecosystem”, which includes a number of different sized automated sites.

“As the grocery online market continues to expand, Ocado’s partners are building fulfilment networks with Ocado’s CFC ecosystem that will allow them to reach wide geographies,” said the company.

“Grocery boardrooms worldwide are wrestling with the question of how to build online capacity that not only meets the growth in demand they have seen in the past year, but that also serves that demand profitably and flexibly in the long term, with a better customer offering than competitors,” said Luke Jensen, chief executive, Ocado Solutions. “This mini CFC underlines the flexibility Ocado’s solutions bring to our partners, complementing the scaled benefits of Ocado Retail’s larger sites and shortening the order lead times available to customers in Bristol. We look forward to the next mini go-live in the UK with Bicester, and the first in North America with Kroger, in Romulus, Michigan”.

Melanie Smith chief executive, Ocado Retail, said: “We are so proud to be delivering the first orders from our newest CFC in Bristol today. Mini Customer Fulfilment Centres like this allow us to better serve our customers, as we provide the best quality products from the widest range of any grocer. We continue to put our customers’ needs first, prioritising speed, amazing service and exceptional value”.

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