Albert Heijn opens 5th home shop center, toughens competition with Picnic

The online home delivery market in the Netherlands is becoming a serious battlefield now. Two major online supermarket startups in the country including Picnic and Albert Heijn(AH), are into a cut-throat competition with each other these days.

Earlier, Picnic opened a distribution center with 300 employees in Diemen. The four-year-old startup claimed to have accrued more than 35,000 customers in Amsterdam alone. Also, the company recently announced that it will be delivering throughout the major areas of Amsterdam from mid-February onwards.

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Now in response to Picnic, Albert Heijn has announced to open a new, fifth Home Shop Center (HSC) this year to support the strong growth of e-commerce. With the increasing popularity of home delivery via ah.nl, the new HSC will accommodate around 1,000 new employees. In the meantime, the supermarket continues to innovate in the home delivery market with new services and initiatives such as Allerhande Kookt.

AH: The latest addition!

This will be the fifth home delivery shop of AH, which will be coming to operation from September 2019 onwards. Moreover, the company aims to compile 40,000 home orders from Greater Amsterdam every week. According to reports, AH has already begun recruiting more employees.

Spread over an area of 20,000 square meters, the Albert Heijn shop will be the largest. Marcel Holtmaat, operational manager at Albert Heijn stated, “It will be a mega-supermarket with 30,000 products”.

Philip Padberg, the new general manager of ah.nl said, “Over the past few years, Albert Heijn has made home delivery of groceries easier by, among other things, track & trace, the national rollout of the delivery bundle in combination with free delivery at bol.com and a lower minimum order amount on Wednesday and Thursday. We are continuing this year with the renewal of our e-commerce services.”

At some Pick Up Points, especially outside urban areas, a shift can be seen from home delivery. Therefore, a few of them will be closed in the coming period.

Also, the number of HUBs – a location on the outskirts of the city from where delivery trucks drive into the city – is expanding for even more efficient delivery. The other HSCs from Albert Heijn are located in Almere, Eindhoven, Rotterdam and the Meern.

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