Sainsbury’s has selected Norwegian retail technology company StrongPoint to supply its picking solution which staff will use to gather groceries ordered online from the shopfloor.
StrongPoint’s in-store manual picking solution – which the company claims to be the world’s fastest and most efficient – is being rolled out estate wide.
Strongpoint works with grocery and retail businesses in more than 20 countries, with offices in Norway, Sweden, the Baltics, Finland, Spain and the UK and Ireland. As well as picking technology it offers electronic shelf labels, shop floor robots, self-checkouts and self-scan tech, click & collect temperature-controlled grocery lockers, in-store and drive-through grocery pickup solutions and POS systems.
Having secured partnerships with major European retailers including ICA and Coop in Sweden, Felleskjøpet in Norway, Alimerka in Spain, Maxima in The Baltics and Spar International, its UK presence has until now been limited.
“We’re very focused on making this a success with Sainsbury’s,” Jacob Tveraabak, StrongPoint CEO told The Grocer. “But what we’ve seen across the other geographies that we serve is that, once we start serving a retailer with one solution, then where there’s logic to serve other solutions we do that.”
“Our Nordic and Baltic customers, we have three to four solutions and we’re starting to create an ecosystem of solutions which is where it really starts making sense for our customers,” he added. “And of course, we hope that with such a such an esteemed client, we will get attention from others too. The fact that we now serve the UK’s second largest grocery retailer is a perfect testament to the quality of our solution.”
In 2022, StrongPoint acquired UK shop fit out firm Air Link Group for £9.5m, which supplies construction services, grocery lockers, self-checkouts, vending systems and queue management systems to the likes of Tesco, Sainsbury’s, and Asda.
This week the company appointed Alex Eveleigh to senior vice president and MD for the UK and Ireland. Eveleigh has spent the last 15 year in grocery in senior positions at Asda, Aldi and Ocado. Most recently, he served as director of growth at ecommerce automation company Takeoff Technologies.
“The UK and Ireland are facing unprecedented challenges, including labour costs, competition from discounters, and how to make e-commerce more profitable,” Eveleigh said. “StrongPoint’s in-store and e-commerce solutions, purpose-built to drive profitability while creating better and faster customer experiences, are exactly what these markets need.”
No comments yet