Ocado, Groupe Casino plan JV for customer fulfilment centers in France

Ocado Group and French mass-market retail group Groupe Casino plan to create a new exclusive joint venture (JV) to support the development and management of single or multi-tenanted customer fulfilment centers (CFCs) in France.

In this connection, the British retail company has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Groupe Casino.

The companies already have a partnership for online grocery services in Ile-de-France. By making use of their combined expertise, including Ocado Group’s experience in the UK of providing multi-retailer customer fulfilment centers, the partners expect to tap into the considerable and increasing demand for online grocery services in the French market.

Jean-Charles Naouri from Groupe Casino said: “Casino Group is pleased to announce this new agreement with Ocado Group. This partnership illustrates our ability to once again revolutionize the way of disrupting the online grocery market.

“After having experienced the success of the Ocado solution with Monoprix Plus, Casino Plus and Naturalia Marché Bio, the French consumers will be able to benefit from new, even more efficient e-commerce services, making their daily needs even easier.”

Ocado, Groupe Casino plan joint venture for customer fulfilment centers in France. Photo courtesy of Mrnaveed/Wikipedia.org.

The joint venture will bank on the combined strengths of Ocado Group and Groupe Casino to offer logistics services for future customer fulfilment centers. The services planned to be offered include project management for the construction and set-up of customer fulfilment centers along with the hiring and operations management of employees.

Ocado Group through Ocado Solutions will also provide its automated fulfilment and software solutions to all grocery retailers in France, with Ocado Smart Platform (OSP) capacity in the future future customer fulfilment centers available to various grocery retailers, which include Groupe Casino itself.

Tim Steiner — CEO of Ocado Group said: “This announcement marks a deepening of the relationship between Groupe Casino and Ocado Group, and it will further support the capital light expansion of our partnership into other French regions. For the first time, it will also open up the whole of the French grocery market to Ocado’s solutions.

“Additionally, by integrating the Octopia marketplace into our end-to-end smart platform, we are bringing more proven, market-leading flexibility to our partners’ online ecosystems.”