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* Ocado's sixth 'CFC' to go live late 2020 or early 2021
* Bristol site will have capacity of 30,000 orders a week
* Ocado and M&S completed joint venture in August
* Shares up 0.9% at 0903 GMT, up 49% this year
(Adds detail, analyst comment, shares)
LONDON, Nov 28 (Reuters) - British online grocer Ocado
will open its first "mini" robotic warehouse in
Bristol, western England, by early 2021, it said on Thursday,
signalling its warehouse technology can be rolled out more
quickly and in a bigger range of locations.
While Ocado's retail business holds only a 1.4% share of
Britain's grocery market, its technology has powered the group's
8.1 billion pound ($10.4 billion) stock market valuation,
enabling it to secure partnership deals with supermarket groups
around the world, including Kroger in the United States.
"This is not about Bristol, but about what it says for its
technology biz," said Bernstein analyst Bruno Monteyne.
He said the site going live as quickly as 13 months is half
the typical deployment time for a larger warehouse, indicating
that warehouses overseas could also be developed at a faster
rate.
Identifying Bristol as big enough to sustain what Ocado
calls a "customer fulfilment centre" (CFC) also triples the
number of addressable cities for Ocado.
"It is about reducing execution risk, speeding up deployment
and extending materially the applicable territories for the
international deals," said Monteyne.
Shares in Ocado were up 0.9% at 0903 GMT, extending gains
this year to 49%.
The Bristol CFC, which is being built in an existing 150,000
square feet warehouse, will be Ocado's sixth and is expected to
go live at the end of 2020 or early 2021. It will support around
815 jobs in the local area.
The mini CFC will have the capacity for over 30,000 orders
per week compared to about 85,000 orders per week expected from
Ocado CFC 5, currently under construction at Purfleet, east of
London.
Despite its smaller size, Ocado expects the Bristol site to
achieve productivity close to that of its standard facilities.
Ocado and Marks & Spencer completed a 1.5 billion
pound joint venture deal in August, creating Ocado Retail and
signaling the end of Ocado's supply contract with upmarket
supermarket chain Waitrose in September 2020.
Ocado customers in Bristol and the surrounding area will
have a wider range of options for delivery, including placing
orders for delivery later the same day.
"In the future, mini-sized CFCs can complement the
standard-sized CFCs to build a fulfilment network including in
areas not suitable for larger CFCs," Ocado said.
Ocado Retail is scheduled to update on fourth quarter
trading on Dec. 12.
($1 = 0.7794 pounds)
(Reporting by James Davey, Editing by Paul Sandle and Toby
Chopra)
