Ocado Takes British Technology Global to Deliver Smarter, Greener Grocery Shopping

Ocado Group has opened its first fully automated customer fulfilment centre (CFC) in South Korea, a milestone that underlines the pace of the technology group's international growth.

The site, ZETTA Smartcentre Busan, was launched this month with Lotte Shopping, one of Korea's largest retailers, and will serve a catchment of around four million households across Busan and the wider Yeongnam region. It is expected to create roughly 2,000 jobs locally.

The facility showcases some of the most advanced technology Ocado has deployed. It features the group's fully automated freezer, which operates at -25°C and extends Ocado's hive-and-bot architecture into frozen goods, delivering more than double the productivity of a traditional manual freezer. Energy-efficient 3D-printed bots and multi-temperature totes increase storage density, while the operation supports Korea's popular "dawn delivery" model, with orders reaching customers before 7am.

Sustainability has been designed in from the outset. Daytime deliveries will use an all-electric fleet, and a planned solar installation is expected to cut annual carbon emissions by more than 1,000 tonnes — making Busan, on Ocado's assessment, its most environmentally efficient fulfilment centre globally.

Nick De La Vega, chief revenue officer at Ocado Group, described the opening as "another major milestone for Ocado as we launch one of our most advanced CFCs to date in one of the world's leading markets for grocery e-commerce."

Cha Woo Chul, chief executive of Lotte Mart & Super, said the partnership would "reshape the paradigm of domestic online grocery shopping" by delivering farm-fresh produce on schedule to four million households in the Yeongnam region.

The market backdrop is compelling: online accounts for around 28% of South Korean grocery retail sales, having grown at a compound annual rate of more than 20% since 2019.

Busan is the first of six automated CFCs planned under the Lotte partnership, which was signed in 2022 and went live in April 2025 with the launch of the Lotte-Mart Zetta online service. A second site is planned for Goyang in the Seoul metropolitan area.

The Korean rollout sits within a broader period of momentum. Ocado now counts 14 retail partners across Europe, North America, Asia-Pacific and the Middle East, including Kroger, Sobeys, Coles, Aeon, Auchan Retail, ICA and Alcampo. With mutual exclusivity arrangements having rolled off in most markets at the end of 2025, the group has signalled its intention to open commercial conversations in multiple new territories.

That shift is already producing results. In May 2026 Ocado agreed a partnership with Asda to overhaul the UK retailer's online grocery operation from early 2027, and in July it announced a large automated CFC for a fast-growing European national retailer, due to launch in FY28 using its Re:Imagined technology suite.

For a business built on exporting British-engineered automation, Busan is a persuasive shop window.