On the occasion of the inauguration of the new multifunctional space – which houses both the offices and the logistics warehouse – we discovered how it works and what lies behind e-commerce that connects consumers with farmers, breeders and artisan producers. A journey through environment, algorithms and taste
A new operational headquarters has progressed from a technological and environmental point of view and important goals have been achieved and are to be achieved by the end of 2022. How it works and what’s behind Cortilia, e-commerce born in 2011 that connects consumers with farmers, breeders and artisan producers and allows you to “shop like in the countryside”? We find out by visiting the company’s new headquarters just outside Milan, which was inaugurated last May.
A food tech company
The operation of Cortilia is simple: via the website or app you choose your groceries from more than 2500 products (from fruit to fresh seasonal vegetables, from fish to meat, from cold meats to dairy products to many other products such as wine and craft beer. , beauty products or household cleaning products). You always choose the desired delivery time on the app, you pay (by credit card, Paypal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Edenred meal vouchers) and that’s it. Cortilia – present in 800 municipalities in northern Italy, including Milan, Turin and Bologna – describes itself as a “food-tech company”, explains Marco Porcaro, founder and CEO, because “it is a company that offers technology, service, product quality and craftsmanship, with a fundamental technical factor that makes it possible to offer customers food that fits their lifestyle, and to protect the environment, avoid surplus products and have a low impact on the environment, by automatically adjusting the vehicles to organize, many of which are electric, who make home deliveries”.
The new headquarters
The new Cassina de ‘Pecchi headquarters, on the outskirts of Milan, is spread over 17 thousand square meters and occupies a 50 thousand square meter multifunctional space, part of a major redevelopment project of the area in which it stands, and in in accordance with the highest standards of environmental sustainability. Many structural measures have been taken in the design, they explain, aimed at making energy consumption more efficient, including responsible management of water resources, guaranteed by an innovative rainwater collection system. The semi-automatic warehouse manages the processing of tens of thousands of items per day and consists of three storage areas with different temperatures. In the warehouse, one machine makes the boxes, another prints labels with water-based ink, while belts transport the boxes from one sector to another to load the products. The photovoltaic panels on the roof cover half of the energy consumption, the rest comes from energy from renewable sources, and thanks to this approach of respect for the environment, energy saving and reduction of emissions, the site is LEED certified (“the most widely recognized worldwide for sustainable building”) of the highest level, Gold.
The method of Cortilia
Purchasing, product selection, app design: everything was developed internally by the technology team. The method used is that of the short supply chain, from producer to consumer, and thanks to artificial intelligence algorithms, the employees tell us, Cortilia is able to minimize environmental waste, by ensuring day after day the sale of each individual product thus ordering what is not needed and in line with the expected sales; consequently, food waste is reduced to about one percent. The unsold products are donated to the Lombardy Food Bank. “We have tens of thousands of customers who shop with us every week – Porcaro continues – and we ended 2021 with a growth of more than 20 percent, with more than 40 million turnover”. The next challenge? The opening, in the second half of the year, in Rome.
Source: TG 24 Sky
I am Annabelle Sampson and I work for The News Dept as an author for their news department. My main focus is on economy news, but I also cover other topics such as business, finance, and current affairs. My writing has been featured in prominent publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Forbes Magazine, and the Financial Times.
