THG boss Matthew Moulding has praised investment giant SoftBank after his company signed a major deal with AutoStore Systems.
The online retail and software giant has partnered with the Norway group which currently builds all the robots at its Manchester campus.
The deal will allow THG Ingenuity to despatch around £2bn of beauty products from a 500,000 sq ft THG facility. Mr Moulding added that a second site is being build in New Jersey, USA, which is expected to go live at the end of March.
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In a post on social media, the co-founder and CEO praised the involvement of Japanese investment giant SoftBank in helping to pave the way for the deal to be agreed.
The message came after SoftBank sold its entire stake in THG to Mr Moulding and Qatar Investment Authority, the country's sovereign wealth fund, in October 2022.
The move saw SoftBank make a £450m loss after it bought an 8% holding in the software and retail giant in May 2021.
It came after a $1.6bn deal that would have seen SoftBank take a near 20% stake in a major division of THG was abandoned in July last year.
Writing on LinkedIn, Mr Moulding said: "The partnership between AutoStore and THG Ingenuity is very simple.
"To date, AutoStore would produce all the hardware and robots for customers seeking to automate their distribution.
"They would then recommend third party firms to provide the necessary software to talk with the robots and the warehouse systems.
"Typically this would require three or more software solutions from different companies in order to get the automation live.
"This was not only costly to achieve, given the number of parties involved, but creates complexity and risk in trying to get multiple solutions to work.
"At THG, we’ve built within the Ingenuity platform all the necessary software solutions to talk with the AutoStore robots, removing the need for third party providers. This reduces the time to onboard new clients, as well as costs for all involved.
"Under the AutoStore x THG Ingenuity global distribution partnership, customers buying their robot systems will now be offered one simple 'plug and play' solution.
"AutoStore provide the robots, THG provides the software, and it’s all handled under the new Autostore pay-per-pick model banner.
"THG is paid a fee for each product picked by the AutoStore robots using the solution. So we will be hoping that, one day, billions of products are picked across the world each week using AutoStore x THG Ingenuity technology robots!
"It was the SoftBank partnership announced back in May 2021 which developed our relationship with AutoStore. SoftBank was a large shareholder in AutoStore ahead of its stock market listing.
"Through the help of the European SoftBank team, THG has spent the past 18 months working with countless SoftBank portfolio companies assessing possible partnerships.
"While SoftBank are no longer a shareholder in THG (myself and Qatar’s Sovereign Wealth Fund bought their stake in October last year), we are super grateful for the work our teams have done together.
"SoftBank remain one of the world’s leading Tech investors. If anyone ever gets the chance to partner with them, value add like this AutoStore x THG partnership is what you can expect."
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