Nathan Wallace, general manager of Coles customer fulfilment centre operations, said sophisticated “cubing logic” guides the packing. “There’s logic around what bruises and what can taint, so you won’t put bleach with apples. Equally, you won’t put a loaf of bread down the bottom. All that logic is built into it,” he said.

Once a customer’s order is assembled, it is brought together and placed in a truck. Delivery trucks also use AI software – rather than Google Maps – to determine the most efficient routes. The software is sensitive enough to allow extra time for apartments and new addresses.

Coles’ Truganina warehouse also has a shop where staff can buy discounted food close to its use-by date. Food that cannot be sold is also given to the staff canteen, which sells $3 coffees and $5 meals, or donated to food relief charities Foodbank and SecondBite.

Phil Stephens of Ocado, Coles’ UK technology partner, said Australia was one of the fastest-growing markets in the world for grocery e-commerce.

Woolworths has 49.4 per cent of the Australian online grocery market and Coles holds 30.7 per cent, according to the latest IBISWorld figures. German supermarket Aldi does not offer online shopping because online sales are less profitable than instore ones.

Woolworths said 14.5 per cent of its sales last quarter were online, up from 12.2 per cent a year ago. It said it was making significant investments in its e-commerce network, which included seven customer fulfilment centres where workers “handpick thousands of online orders to the highest standard every day”.

Retail expert Trent Rigby said Woolworths was considered more advanced for online grocery orders. He said the industry was waiting to see whether US giant Amazon got into fresh food.

“Amazon do staples here in Australia, things like sauce and nappies, but where they don’t play is fresh food, so it will be interesting to see what Amazon does. They would almost certainly need to acquire someone to have a distribution network for fresh food.”

The Australian Retailers Association said online sales were growing at 6.4 per cent a year, and that automation and AI would play a crucial role for retailers in coming years.

“Through the use of innovations like robots and AI, manually laborious jobs can be taken over by technology, leaving room for employees to re-skill or work in other more fulfilling roles, such as operating hi-tech parking equipment, logistics or customer-facing positions,” said the association’s Fleur Brown.

But harsh warehouse conditions in the US have thrown the spotlight on conditions in Australia. Michael Donovan, Victorian secretary of the SDA union, said new technology was affecting the way people worked everywhere, including at the new Coles customer fulfilment centre in Truganina.

“The SDA has negotiated wages and conditions for workers at this site. We are in constant contact with our members to ensure they are satisfied with their working arrangements.”

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The online investments come as Coles and Woolworths face legal action from the competition watchdog, which alleges that the supermarket giants manipulated prices on hundreds of everyday staples to boost their bottom lines.

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