Ocado to close fulfilment centre putting over 2,000 jobs at risk

The online grocer will shut the oldest site in its network in favour of “new enhanced fulfilment centres”.

Ocado’s Hatfield centre currently fulfils 20% of its 400,000 orders to customers per week, but the group said this will now be moved to its “high-productivity, next-generation” facilities around the UK.

A consultation process with its 2,300 Hatfield employees has begun, with the retailer focusing on redeploying as many staff as possible to other sites, primarily to the new Luton customer fulfilment centre due to open later this year.

According to the retailer, its latest generation of robotic customer fulfilment centres achieve more than 200 units picked per labour hour and the newest sites have lower energy usage. 

Ocado Retail chief executive Tim Steiner said: “As the online grocery channel grows, our new, enhanced fulfilment centres and technologies will drive a step change in customer experience and efficiency.

“With this capacity coming online, now is the right time for us to halt operations at our oldest facility at Hatfield and consider our future options for the site. Ocado.com customers will continue to enjoy the same outstanding standard of service throughout the region, which will further improve as the benefits of our new technologies are deployed across the network.

“We have many brilliant Hatfield-based colleagues who have been with us for a long time and are a big part of our journey. We want to keep as much of this talent and experience within the business as possible and expect to retain a large proportion of colleagues impacted by these changes, either in our new Luton CFC or across our wider UK network. We will be doing everything we can to support those affected through the consultation.”