Tesco intends to press ahead with a trial of a robotic cube storage system at one of its stores, despite the company that created it having entered bankruptcy proceedings.
The supermarket said it would work with the buyer of Canadian warehouse tech company Attabotics to evaluate an automated storage and retrieval system called The Studio.
Attabotics in July filed a ‘notice of intention to make a proposal’ under the Canadian Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act, and laid off nearly 200 staff. “They are done for. Everyone lost their jobs,” one employee posted online at the time.
According to documents filed with the Court of King’s Bench of Alberta, seen by The Grocer, Attabotics’ assets were acquired by Lafayette Engineering, a family-owned engineering firm based in Kentucky, last week.
The Attabotics system features “extremely dense” cube storage that “minimises the traditional fulfilment centre footprint”, from which products are retrieved by robots moving horizontally and vertically within it. The robots take totes of products to workstations to be hand-picked by human workers.
According to sources, Tesco has already been assessing the Attabotics technology for up to two years. It has been suggested Tesco could order between 35 and 50 of the systems, which it would install both in its own stores and warehouses, and those of other retailers, through its fulfilment services subsidiary Transcend Retail Solutions.
Tesco said it did not recognise the figures, and there were no current plans for further installations. Its intention was to initially test a single system at a single Tesco store, it said.
Attabotics was founded in 2016 by Scott Gravelle, and designed and manufactured robots that operate within a modular, three-dimensional storage structure.
While it secured a handful of clients – including Canadian beauty supply retailer Modern Beauty, which installed the tech at two of its warehouses; luxury department store Nordstrom; and Canadian supplier Gordon Food Services – Tesco was by far the biggest potential partner.
In 2024, Attabotics customer Canadian Tire entered a “confidential full and final settlement” after a claim and counterclaim between the companies following a fire at a Canadian Tire distribution centre the previous year. “No findings have been made with respect to the cause and origin of the DC fire,” Canadian Tire said following the agreement.
Attabotics’ buyer Lafayette Systems – which did not respond to a request for comment – specialises in warehouse conveyor and sortation systems, according to its website.
Transcend Retail Solutions was quietly established by Tesco in 2023. The supermarket’s director of strategy and transformation Oliver Vogt was revealed as its CEO late last year. Transcend’s chief customer officer is Keith Chapman, Tesco’s head of consulting.
The subsidiary says it has “cracked the code for fulfilment”. Part of its offering is micro-fulfilment solutions to “help retailers build a profitable fulfilment operation that customers love”.
Late last year, Transcend announced its first deal, with New Zealand retailer Foodstuffs North Island.
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