Joachim Pinhammer

Kesko has commissioned Austrian intralogistics specialist Knapp to automate its planned new logistics centre. With the new facility in the municipality of Nurmijärvi, north of Helsinki, the Finnish grocery retailer aims to make its supply chain more efficient and flexible, preparing it for further growth.

Since beginning of this week, Amazon has been blocking Meta’s new AI agent Muse from gaining access to its shopping pages. The company had previously tried in vain to persuade Facebook’s parent company to voluntarily refrain from allowing the bot to make purchases on behalf of consumers at its online shop. This highlights just how fiercely companies are fighting for…

Yesterday, Rewe Group and Mars were jointly honoured with an ECR Award from GS1 Germany for their efforts to bring impulse items to self-checkouts. The partners received the award for their ‘European NextGen Checkout Project’ in the ECR Collaboration Excellence category.

Alcampo has selected Chinese manufacturer Hanshow for a companywide rollout of digital price labels. Auchan Group’s Spanish subsidiary plans to equip all its 507 supermarkets and hypermarkets with ESLs. Before end of this year, it aims to roll out a total of 560,000 labels across 84 of its supermarkets.

Marks & Spencer is using artificial intelligence to ensure sustainable animal welfare at all dairy farms supplying its M&S milk range. The technology utilises cameras already installed in barns and complements the AI-powered monitoring solution provided by CattleEye. The British retail company claims to be the first retailer using AI to monitor animal welfare across its entire milk supply chain.…

Edeka regional subsidiary for Northern Bavaria, Saxony and Thuringia is operating a semi-autonomous grocery store for the first time. The Diska store in the municipality of Obermaßfeld-Grimmenthal in southern Thuringia enables customers to shop autonomously without staff outside regular opening hours. The technology for this so-called hybrid operation is provided by Austrian smart-store specialist Anystore.

Rewe Group’s Centre of Excellence for Agriculture has launched an AI research project to analyse animal welfare, in collaboration with stakeholders from academia and the industry. Advisory board member Max Esser-Geneschen initiated the project, which aims to investigate the potential of camera and sensor technology in livestock farming under real-world conditions.

Sainsbury’s has appointed a new Head of Martech. With immediate effect, Dave Cain is responsible for strategy, governance and futureproofing of the British supermarket operator’s martech and adtech stacks. Martech plays currently a central role in Sainsbury’s digital transformation.

Belgian Colruyt Group has decided to operate its unattended Okay Direct convenience stores exclusively in the vicinity of a traditional Okay outlet in future. This explains the closure of two of its three existing locations at the end of last month. At the same time, the company has announced plans to bring the 24/7 stores to the capital, Brussels.

Waitrose is currently rolling out electronic shelf labels from the Korean supplier SoluM. The British supermarket operator of the John Lewis Partnership has now equipped more than 200 of its about 420 stores with the technology.