Australian multinational Woolworths Group has opened its first automated customer fulfilment centre (CFC) in Sydney’s west, which it says increases its capacity by as much as 50%.

The 22,000sqm fulfilment centre has been automated by Knapp Australia and is now capable of delivering up to 60,000 online orders each week to homes across the western Sydney area.

The automated CFC includes the Evo Shuttles for all temperature zones, the Pick-it-Easy Robot for fully automated single-item picking, and automatic bagging machines. 

The site carries more than 30,000 products and also features Australia’s largest Direct To Boot offering with 16 bays.

Woolworths’ managing director of eComX, Sally Copland, says: “Western Sydney is one of our largest and fastest growing eCommerce catchments, and we’re thrilled to be unlocking greater capacity for our customers with the opening of our first ever Automated CFC in Auburn”.

Woolworths describes the Auburn CFC as “tech enabled, but people powered” with a staff of more than 600 on site.