Ocado has been forced to cancel thousands of orders and apologise to its customers following a fire at its largest warehouse in southeast London.
The online grocer said the blaze at its automated fulfilment centre in Erith started after three robots collided.
Around 800 staff had to be evacuated from the site on Friday, while firefighters worked through the night to tackle the inferno.
It is the second time in as many years that Ocado has suffered a fire at one of its customer fulfilment centres, which it refers to as CFCs.
In 2019, its facility in Andover burned down after a fault in a battery charging unit. The site burned for four days and had to be completely rebuilt.
No staff injured in the blaze
Although the latest blaze at its Erith warehouse was on a much smaller scale, Ocado said it would cause “disruption to operations”. The site processes 150,000 orders per week, many of which have had to be cancelled.
It added it was “working to restore normal service as soon as possible” and predicted that the facility would be back up and running later this week.
Ocado said no one was injured in the incident and that all of its staff were safe.
The grocer-cum-tech giant has been propelled into the FTSE 100 during the past few years after licensing its automated warehouse technology to a string of international grocers.
The likes of US giant Kroger, Canadian grocer Sobeys, Casino in France and Japanese retailer Aeon have all struck deals to use Ocado’s tech and logistics platform, Ocado Solutions, to help them sell online.
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