Moscow, 20 August 2019 – X5 Retail Group ("X5" or the "Company"), a leading Russian food retailer(LSE and MOEX ticker: "FIVE"), has opened its third dark store as part of the Perekrestok.ru online supermarket. Located in the settlement of Vyoshki in the Moscow Region, the new facility has a total area of 18,000 sq m, making it X5’s largest dark store to date.
The facility in Vyoshki is capable of storing 35,000 SKUs. At the initial stage, it will be serviced by around 300 employees and 40 vehicles, will increase to 1,000 and 130, respectively, after full ramp-up. Capable of handling as many as 5,000 orders per day, the new dark store has helped to expand the total capacity of the Perekrestok.ru online supermarket by 1.5 times overall, and to double it in Moscow.
In the second quarter of 2019, the online supermarket handled up to 4,200 orders per day. In the first half of 2019, the total number of orders handled exceeded 541,000, which represents a 4.5-fold rise year-on-year. Over the same period, the revenue of Perekrestok.ru went up 4.6 times, reaching RUB 1.76 bn net of VAT.
The launch of Perekrestok.ru in April 2017 coincided with the opening of X5’s first hybrid store in Moscow, which functions as both a regular supermarket and a warehouse for picking online orders. In August 2018, X5 opened its first Perekrestok.ru dark store in Moscow. Designed exclusively for online order fulfilment and servicing, the facility is accessible only by X5 personnel. In autumn 2018, Perekrestok.ru began operations in St Petersburg and the Leningrad Region, where it also launched a darkstore.