S Group and Starship Technologies team up to launch robot grocery deliveries in Finland
S-kaupat, the online grocery store of Finnish firm S Group, will start express deliveries with delivery robots during the spring and summer, in partnership with Starship Technologies.
In the first phase, deliveries will commence in the HOK-Elanto area of Finland, where the robots were piloted last spring.
In the next phase, over the summer, the service will open across seven locations including Tampere, Turku, Pori, Rauma, Jyväskylä and Oulu.
“Demand for fast delivery is growing strongly and this is also reflected in our future plans. With Starship’s robot technology, we can offer our customers fast and reliable delivery of their purchases across Finland, and in a rather delightful way,” says CDO Jarkko Kyttänen, S Group Retail.
“We’re thrilled to expand our partnership with S Group to multiple locations across Finland,” says Alastair Westgarth, CEO of Starship Technologies.
“Our successful partnership in Espoo last year showed the tremendous demand for robot deliveries among Finns.”
“We’re confident that communities all over the country will also embrace our innovative service, making delivery services an essential part of everyday life. Finland is our ‘home market’, with our R&D centre in Helsinki driving the design and development of our robots.”
“Online shopping has clearly established itself among its customer owners. The CSAT score for customer satisfaction is currently 79 and we are particularly pleased that there is hardly any negative feedback,” says Kyttänen.
“In the online grocery shopping space, we are looking to the long-term. We are investing in customer focus, profitable growth, service reliability and speed through automation and robot technology,” he adds.
S Group’s first automated grocery shopping warehouses will start operating in 2024 in the HOK-Elanto store and Pirkanmaan Osuuskauppa.
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