AutoStore won Best Fulfilment Strategy 2025

On 22 December 2025 – AutoStore, the global leader in technology-driven, intelligent order fulfilment solutions, today announced it is a winner of the 2025 Modern Retail Awards in the category of Best Fulfilment Strategy, for adapting its automated retail fulfilment system to power the world’s first fully robotic vertical farm in collaboration with OnePointOne. AutoStore is named a winner alongside Sam’s Club, ButcherBox, Ulta Beauty, and H&M.

The Modern Retail Awards recognise companies redefining how commerce operates in a rapidly changing retail landscape. AutoStore stands out by proving that the same automation system can power everything from fast-moving retail warehouses to automated vertical farms, helping operations run more efficiently and adapt to new challenges.

With more than 1,850 systems deployed across 60+ countries, AutoStore is a core part of fulfilment operations worldwide. This award recognises the company’s ability to adapt that same automation backbone to an entirely new environment: agriculture. In partnership with vertical farming company OnePointOne, AutoStore applies its robotic grid technology to create Opollo Farm, the world’s first vertical farm run entirely by robots. Instead of storing consumer goods, the system manages living crops, precisely controlling water, light, airflow, and harvesting with minimal human handling

“Fulfilment is no longer just about moving goods faster; it’s about building infrastructure that can adapt as business models evolve,” said Parth Joshi, Chief Product Officer at AutoStore. “This project showed that the same automation building blocks and solutions powering retail can be extended into entirely new domains, like food production, without rethinking the system from scratch. That kind of flexibility is becoming essential as retailers face tighter margins, labour constraints, and growing pressure to localise supply chains.”

By extending its automation platform beyond traditional warehouses, AutoStore shows how fulfilment systems can reduce dependence on labour, shorten supply chains, and operate efficiently in space-constrained environments. The Opollo Farm model delivers produce closer to consumers, uses significantly less water than traditional farming methods, and reduces transit time, proving that fulfilment strategy is no longer limited to retail alone.

The award highlights a broader shift in how companies think about fulfilment. Not as a fixed warehouse function, but as a modular, adaptable layer of infrastructure that can support new business models, industries, and sustainability goals.