Austrian supermarket chain Billa has opened its first food fulfilment centre (FFC) in Austria. The new facility will handle only online orders, with manual order picking.
The new centre will create approximately 90 new jobs - 50 in the first half, while another 40 will be added by the end of the year. The centre is designed to enable further growth in the company's online business. It spans an area of over 7,250 square metres.
Billa CEO Josef Siess said, ”With regard to the freshness of goods, speed and reliability in terms of service and delivery, we want to once more clearly position ourselves as innovators in the online food industry.”
High Delivery Output
The FFC began operations in May, but is now acting as a central hub, handling products that had previously been handled across seven branches in the Vienna region. This has shortened delivery time by up to two hours, the retailer reports.
The FFC comes due to a massive surge in online popularity. Billa reported that it achieved an increased turnover of 160% in 2016. This pushed volumes of products and deliveries to a level which ‘would no longer be manageable with the previous procedure’, the company said.
© 2017 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Aidan O’Sullivan. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine.
