As has been widely reported in the press over the last week, we would like to congratulate Towngate’s tenant Starship Technologies (who are based on Leeds’ industrial estate at Olympia Trading Estate) on their recent partnership with the Co-op and Leeds City Council. Together they have teamed up to bring autonomous grocery delivery using robotic technologies to the streets of Leeds and other cities in the UK.
At present the service is available to 20,000 residents within the Adel and Tinshill area of Leeds, with groceries picked fresh in local Co-op stores on Spen Lane (Tinshill) and Otley Road (Adel) for delivery quickly and conveniently in the community. Orders are made through the Starship food delivery app, which is available for download on iOS and Android . Leeds residents are able to choose from a range of grocery items, schedule their delivery, then drop a pin where they want their delivery to be sent.
Customers can order their delivery to arrive in under an hour and watch the robot travel in real-time via an interactive map. Customers receive an alert when the robot arrives, and can meet and unlock it through the app.
With a delivery fee starting from just 99p, the robots have become a much-loved presence across a number of communities. The expansion in the North of England for the first time follows the successful introduction of autonomous deliveries in Milton Keynes, Bedford, Northampton, Cambourne, and most recently Cambridge. Since the robots were first introduced into the UK, an estimated 1.1 million miles of car journeys have been saved with a 445-tonne reduction in CO2 emissions.
