RobotRisk Autonomous Systems Incident & Risk Register
RobotRisk / Ocado Intelligent Automation / 2021-07

Erith fulfilment centre fire after three-bot collision on the grid

S3 · 07/2021
~12:30 UK · Ocado Intelligent Automation · Erith, London, UK

Record

CompanyOcado Intelligent Automation
Categorywarehouse automation
Typefire
Date07/2021
Time of day~12:30 UK
LocationErith, London, UK · Ocado Erith fulfilment centre
SeverityS3 (recall, enforcement, or fleet-wide fault)
Scale3 robots involved; <1% of grid damaged; site handles up to 150,000 orders/week
Confidencehigh
VerificationCited source on file; not independently re-verified
SourceThe Register (also Logistics Manager, London Fire Brigade, Euronews)

What happened

A collision of three robots on the grid at Ocado's Erith, south-east London fulfilment centre caused a fire; roughly 15 fire engines and 100 firefighters responded and about 800 staff were evacuated, with no injuries reported. Ocado had to cancel thousands of customer orders and damage was contained to under 1% of the grid.

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