Market Report: Goods-to-Person Ecommerce Fulfilment Robotics 2020

2019 marked an inflection point for warehouse robotics with increasing adoption, prominent funding in piece picking, micro fulfillment centers, major acquisitions, and continued growth expected.

Notable market developments; increasing traction for g2p robotics

• Increased and wide ranging traction for robotic warehouse solutions. 2019 was an inflection year.pilots converting into larger installations
• Hybrid solutions and deployments appearing across sectors and verticals; new type of vendors
• And continued chinese influence
• Increasing market requirement for solution to allow easy integration with wms/erp; extending
• Into wess to manage disparate automation and robotics systems
• Multiple new vendors in the space
• Larger 3pls revving up their innovation teams to
• Amazon launching kiva v.5 in 2020
• Increasing number of g2p robotics engineers
• Moving into the autonomous vehicles space
• Fedex , walmart and shopify launched fulfilment services

Notable market trends; the mfc as part of the last mile solution

• The micro fulfilment centre (mfc) has taken centre stage with most vendors offering a solution; part of the last mile solution
• Emergence of piece picking robotics; no ‘lights out’ warehouses planned in the short term
• Increasing adoption of manufacturing concepts; digital twins promoted by warehouse automation sector. Embryonic stage

Notable funding; capital continues to flow into the g2p sector

• Funding appears to have shifted towards piece picking robotics, however, one large round may have skewed the market:
• Berkshire grey ($263m) [piece picking]
• Geek+ ($150m) [amr]
• Fabric ($110m) [ casrs , mfc]
• Mujin ($67m) [piece picking]
• Vecna robotics ($50m) [agv]

Notable m&a; a single eyebrow raising transaction on everyones lips: 6river systems +shopify

• Shopify acquired 6river systems for $450m and may have inflated short term expectations for sellers
• Amazon acquired canvas technology
• Thomas l lee partners (pe) acquired a majority stake in autostore from eqt. Est. Ev >$2bn
• M&s acquired 50% of ocado retail ltd (the uk retail division of ocado ) for c.$950m (£750m)

Notable gossip; multiple candidates lining up for ipos

• Stiq interviews suggest there is at least one potential ipo being planned in 2h20 or 1h21 in the
• G2p sector
• There are 2 3 clear ipo candidates, but is the market ready?