Ocado Group and Bon Preu to launch fully automated Catalonia fulfilment centre

Ocado Group plc (LSE: OCDO) and Bon Preu Group have announced the development of a fully automated Customer Fulfilment Centre (CFC) in Parets del Vallès, Catalonia, marking a strategic expansion of their partnership and a significant evolution in Spain’s online grocery infrastructure.

The announcement signals a transition from in-store fulfilment to centralized automation for Bon Preu’s growing ecommerce operations. The new facility will be powered by Ocado’s Re:Imagined platform, which includes robotic picking, AI-based forecasting, and warehouse optimization systems. The partners describe the CFC as a key step toward achieving sustained profitability in online grocery—a category long plagued by narrow margins and logistical complexity.

Bon Preu became Ocado’s first international partner in 2017 and has since built one of Spain’s highest-performing online grocery businesses, with rapid growth since its 2018 digital launch. The new CFC is set to meet rising demand across Catalonia, one of Spain’s most digitally mature regions for food retail.

What strategic advantages are institutional investors seeing in Ocado’s Catalonia expansion with Bon Preu?

Institutional investors tracking Ocado Group have responded positively to the announcement, noting it as a tangible step toward expanding its Solutions revenue stream and validating its capital-intensive technology model in continental Europe. Analysts suggest that this transition—from Ocado’s in-store fulfilment system to a fully automated model—offers significant cost-to-serve reductions, potentially in the range of 25–35% once operating at scale.

Ocado executives described the move as the “next phase” in their relationship with Bon Preu, emphasizing the shift toward long-term profitability through automation. By increasing order accuracy, extending shelf life through precise inventory control, and reducing labour dependency, Ocado’s Re:Imagined suite is expected to strengthen Bon Preu’s margin profile while reinforcing Ocado’s long-term strategy of platform replication across international markets.

How has Bon Preu scaled its online grocery operations since partnering with Ocado Group in 2017?

Since signing its first agreement with Ocado Group in 2017, Bon Preu has steadily grown its online grocery presence across Catalonia using the Ocado Smart Platform’s in-store fulfilment capabilities. The BonpreuEsclat digital brand went live in 2018 and quickly gained traction among Catalan consumers.

Bon Preu now holds one of the highest market shares in Spain’s regional ecommerce grocery segment and was named the highest-rated online supermarket by the Organización de Consumidores y Usuarios (OCU) in 2024. This recognition is particularly noteworthy given the fragmented and competitive nature of Spain’s online grocery sector.

With the upcoming fulfilment centre in Parets del Vallès, Bon Preu is transitioning from store-based picking to a central, robotics-powered operation—effectively scaling up to a model designed for volume, efficiency, and sustained service level excellence.

Why are European retailers increasingly turning to centralized robotic fulfilment centres in 2025?

Across Europe, online grocery operations have historically struggled with high last-mile delivery costs, labour-intensive workflows, and margin pressure. Centralized fulfilment, particularly when supported by AI and robotics, is increasingly viewed as a structural solution to these challenges.

Ocado’s model—a combination of proprietary robotics, dynamic stock management, and data-driven routing—is designed to offer retailers a full-stack solution that bypasses many of the legacy inefficiencies associated with traditional store-based ecommerce. For regional players like Bon Preu, partnering with Ocado means avoiding large-scale internal R&D while rapidly gaining access to advanced fulfilment capabilities.

The Parets del Vallès CFC is emblematic of this trend. It positions Bon Preu to compete not only with national chains, but also with global discounters and third-party delivery apps that continue to expand in Spain’s urban markets.

What financial impact could this new fulfilment centre have on Bon Preu’s unit economics and Ocado’s margin profile?

While financial terms of the fulfilment centre have not been publicly disclosed, prior Ocado CFC deployments in Europe and Asia suggest the unit could improve Bon Preu’s cost-to-serve by double-digit margins over time. The increased automation reduces staffing requirements, minimizes shrinkage, and enhances customer satisfaction through more consistent order accuracy and freshness.

For Ocado Group, each new international deployment improves operational leverage. Recurring revenue from software, maintenance, and technology licensing becomes more predictable as each CFC becomes operational. The Catalonia centre—built for a long-time, high-performing partner—provides investors with evidence of both resilience and replicability in Ocado’s Solutions business.

With Ocado’s share price down around 30% over the past 12 months, driven in part by concerns over the slow pace of international site activations, this new CFC announcement comes at a critical time. It addresses investor demand for higher visibility into Ocado’s revenue pipeline beyond the UK and France.

How are Ocado’s Re:Imagined technologies positioned to transform Bon Preu’s grocery operations?

The Re:Imagined suite, unveiled in 2023 and progressively deployed across new sites, includes a range of modular innovations designed to optimize each phase of the order lifecycle. These include AI-driven demand forecasting, real-time route planning, robotic item picking, smart bin sequencing, and machine vision for product quality control.

In the Catalonia CFC, these technologies will enable Bon Preu to offer expanded inventory, faster delivery windows, and greater order precision. Ocado Group’s emphasis on predictive maintenance and warehouse orchestration software further supports Bon Preu’s ability to maintain uptime during seasonal peaks.

By consolidating fulfilment in a central location rather than relying on distributed store inventory, Bon Preu can improve its perfect order rate—an increasingly important metric in consumer loyalty for online groceries.

What future growth avenues could Ocado unlock from this deployment across Southern Europe?

Ocado’s partnership model allows it to build progressively with each client, offering ISF solutions at early stages and scaling to full CFC deployment as online demand matures. The Bon Preu journey—from a 2017 technology agreement to a 2025 CFC—may now serve as a blueprint for additional partners across Southern Europe.

Countries like Portugal, Italy, and even mid-tier cities in France are witnessing faster-than-expected digital grocery adoption. Ocado may use the Catalonia rollout to promote its platform to new regional grocers looking to compete with Amazon, Glovo, and other logistics-heavy operators.

Institutional sentiment suggests that successful deployment and sustained performance at Parets del Vallès could lead to second-site agreements or even national expansion, creating compounding licensing value for Ocado Group.

Can this automation-powered fulfilment centre reshape online grocery economics in Spain?

The launch of a fully automated CFC in Catalonia signals that both Ocado Group and Bon Preu Group see a viable path to ecommerce profitability—something that has eluded many European grocers. By replacing a manual store-pick model with a scalable, tech-enabled architecture, Bon Preu is elevating its position from digital participant to digital leader.

For Ocado, the deal is both a strategic milestone and a signal to markets that its Solutions segment remains a growth lever, despite recent concerns around capital intensity. If the Parets del Vallès site meets its operational and financial objectives, it may usher in a wave of similar deployments in regional European markets where demand is rising but infrastructure remains fragmented.

As more European grocers look for turnkey ecommerce solutions that offer speed, reliability, and scale, Ocado’s full-stack platform and long-term partner results may be enough to keep investors confident in its international strategy.