RobotRisk › Ocado Intelligent Automation › ~Jul 2021
Erith fulfilment centre fire after three-bot collision on the grid
S3 · ~Jul 2021 · Ocado Intelligent Automation · Erith, London, UK
Record
| Company | Ocado Intelligent Automation |
| Industry | Warehouse automation |
| Type(s) | fire |
| Date | ~Jul 2021 (month precision) |
| Time of day | ~12:30 UK |
| Location | Erith, London, UK · Ocado Erith fulfilment centre |
| Severity | (recall, enforcement, or fleet-wide fault) |
| Scale | 3 robots involved; <1% of grid damaged; site handles up to 150,000 orders/week |
| Confidence | high |
| Verified flag | Cited source on file; not independently re-verified |
Summary
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.
Primary source
The Register (also Logistics Manager, London Fire Brigade, Euronews)
Publisher: The Register (also Logistics Manager, London Fire Brigade, Euronews) · Retrieved: 2026-09-16
Supporting source rows (1)
| Date | Supporting source row | Publisher | Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| ~Jul 2021 | Erith fulfilment centre fire after three-bot collision on the grid | The Register (also Logistics Manager, London Fire Brigade, Euronews) | The Register |
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Warehouse automation context
fire context
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