Lotte Shopping, the retail arm of South Korea’s Lotte Group, has brought its first automated grocery fulfilment centre online in Busan. The site went live in early August under a 2022 partnership with Britain’s Ocado, and it is the first of six installations planned across the country.
Inside the Zetta Smart Center
The Zetta Smart Center Busan runs on the Ocado Smart Platform across roughly 40,000 sqm. Close to a thousand bots move over the top of a storage grid that holds up to 35,000 items, of which 10,000 are chilled or frozen. The bots are the newer 600 Series, lighter than earlier models thanks to 3D-printed components, which trims energy use and lets the fleet run denser over the grid.
A Six-Site Rollout
Busan is the opening move. The agreement signed in November 2022 commits the two companies to six automated facilities in South Korea, giving Lotte a template it can repeat as online grocery demand grows. For Ocado, the site extends its automation footprint in a market where large retailers are racing to build out fast, temperature-controlled fulfilment.
How quickly the remaining five sites come on stream will say a lot about whether the grocery automation model travels well beyond Europe.
