Within three years, the unit cost of moving goods will fall 20% as warehouse robots play a larger role in speeding goods to customers, Walmart said in a statement Tuesday.
The two companies plan to build as many as 20 automated grocery warehouses in the United States to help Cincinnati-based Kroger—which has about 70 stores in central Indiana—turbocharge its e-commerce operation.
The Indianapolis-based system has spent $9 million on the “high-tech integrated service center,” but hopes to save up to $3 million a year through standardizing inventory, ordering in bulk at a discount, and streamlining delivery routes.
The number of warehousing and storage jobs in central Indiana has more than doubled since 2001, both in numbers and as a percentage of total local jobs.
Walmart, Target and Amazon are all-in on the shipping wars, a move retail experts say will help them maintain a competitive edge against low-cost Chinese retailers Shein and Temu.
Some think delivery demand could drop further. Chase Design, a consulting firm, says its surveys show the number of U.S. shoppers who plan to use grocery delivery “all the time” has fallen by half since 2021.
Netherlands-based NewCold, an advanced cold storage logistics company, is considering a 55-acre parcel along Council Drive in the Lebanon Business Park as a potential location for its new 384,300-square-foot warehouse.
The nation’s largest Coca-Cola bottler is planning to merge its Anderson, Bloomington, Lafayette, Shelbyville and Speedway warehousing and distribution operations into a massive new Whitestown facility by next spring.
Kroger Co. and United Kingdom-based online grocer Ocado Group are working on identifying sites for three automated distribution centers in the United States this year and may open as many as 20 within three years.
Widespread fears about automation and job loss are often misplaced. Automation has actually helped create jobs in e-commerce, rather than eliminate them, and stands to create more in the years ahead.
Despite rising wages, voters as a group lost spending power during 2021 and 2022 due to inflation and high interest rates, and are still facing an uphill battle.
Advances in technology traditionally have had the biggest impact on more physical jobs, but generative AI tools will likely be most disruptive for jobs that require brains, not brawn.
The state’s strength in agriculture, plus partners like Purdue University and AgriNovus Indiana, combine to make Indiana a competitive place for generating and attracting ag-related technology and innovation.
America’s employers added a solid 236,000 jobs in March, suggesting that the economy remains on solid footing despite the nine interest rate hikes the Federal Reserve has imposed over the past year in its drive to tame inflation.
In 2020, the city diverted only about 15% of all residential, commercial, industrial and construction waste from landfills, through a combination of recycling and composting. That was far below the U.S. rate of around 35%.
The main factor behind the improvement has been diminished demand for manufactured goods. Spending on goods has fallen for three straight quarters, according to the Commerce Department.
