Lotte Mart has put a dedicated online grocery customer fulfillment center into operation in Busan, separating e-commerce picking from the store floor.
Ocado Group said the site is its first automated CFC with Lotte in South Korea. The facility, known as Zeta Smart Center Busan, is organized so inventory totes travel to workstations rather than staff walking aisles to assemble baskets.
According to Newspim, about 120 robots run on a dense grid at up to four meters per second, with software directing storage locations and tote routes. Robotic arms pick standardized products; people stay in the process for items that need inspection or careful handling, including eggs.
The center also spans multiple temperature zones. Donga reported a deep-freeze area using Ocado technology, with automation running near minus 25 degrees Celsius.
Lotte has set a target of about 30 minutes from order receipt to dispatch readiness and has outlined further centers of this type by 2030, along with an assortment that could grow into tens of thousands of SKUs and a dense set of delivery windows. Those figures remain capacity and design aims rather than published unit economics.
A dedicated CFC can sequence ambient, chilled and frozen lines so a full basket leaves together, while last-mile delivery stays outside the grid. The Busan layout keeps repetitive tote movement and machine-pickable SKUs on automation and concentrates human time on fragile or variable grocery.