Joachim Pinhammer

Carrefour Italy has selected forecasting and replenishment software from Relex. With the move, the retailer, that French Carrefour Group is currently selling to Italian food manufacturer New Princes, aims to reduce inventory while increasing product availability and better adapting its food and non-food assortments to local needs.

Amazon plans to close all its 19 Amazon Fresh stores in the UK. The US online giant announced this in a blog post on Tuesday this week. This also means the end of Just Walk Out technology in larger stores in the United Kingdom. Competitor Sainsbury's had already replaced it with self-checkouts at its London Holborn Circus store in February.

DIY store operator Hornbach has put Solace's event-driven real-time integration platform into operation. The solution from the Canadian specialist provider ensures that all relevant applications can instantly access important data, such as price changes, product information or sales data.

With its new digital platform ‘Spar-Produktwelt’ (Spar Product World), Austrian Spar provides information on prices, origins, and availability of more than 25,000 products from its food range. Customers of company-operated stores in Austria can now access the database via an icon in the Spar app or the company's website.

British supermarket operator Waitrose is trialling Shopic's clip-on devices for shopping trolleys for the first time at a store in Bracknell. Toby Pickard, Retail Futures Senior Partner at the British Institute of Grocery Distribution (IGD), told The Retail Optimiser that, according to sales staff, the solution has been in use there for a few weeks. This is the first installation…

Kik is introducing AI-based solutions for planning, merchandising and inventory management from US specialist Impact Analytics. With the new platform, the textile and non-food discounter aims to modernise processes and provide its teams with more and better data for decision-making.

British retailer Iceland Foods has launched a nationwide initiative to reduce food waste. For this, the frozen food specialist is working with food-sharing platform Olio and technology start-up Gander. Consumers receive real-time notifications via apps from both partners when products nearing their expiry date are discounted at their local Iceland store.

Matalan is further expanding its distribution centre in Knowsley near Liverpool with automation technologies from Knapp. The British fashion and homeware retailer has been relying on scalable solutions from the Austrian intralogistics specialist since 2021.

Thomann is equipping all buildings on its campus with direct room humidification systems from specialist supplier Condair. The German music retailer uses controlled humidity to protect its valuable instruments and ensure well-being and comfort of its customers and employees.

Clothing retailer C&A has improved inventory accuracy from 70 to 95 percent and increased sales by more than 5 per cent by introducing Checkpoint Systems' RFID solution in all European stores and distribution centres. With the project, C&A won the ’Best RFID Implementation in Retail’ award at this year’s RFID Journal Awards.