Nearly five years after it was unveiled, Kroger’s automated distribution center in Phoenix will not be live until the end of this year or early 2026, according to Ocado, the British technology company whose robots will be used to fulfill online grocery orders
While construction of the shell of the building, which is located on the southeast corner of 91st Avenue and Buckeye Road in Phoenix, wrapped up in 2024, Ocado said Kroger has ordered its new Auto-Freezer technology to be installed in the Phoenix and Charlotte sites, so they will not be completed until “early” in Ocado’s 2026 fiscal year, which will start on Dec. 1, 2026.
In January 2021, Kroger, which is the parent company of Fry’s Food Stores in Arizona, said it would construct an $89 million high-tech warehouse in the Valley that would fulfill online grocery orders. But since then, the company has been quiet about the construction of the center that is supposed to be equipped with a series of robots with artificial intelligence.
