by  Satalia Team | 6 November, 2026

London, UK, 6 November 2026 – Satalia is honoured to have won The Food & Drink Supply Chain Excellence Award at the Supply Chain Excellence Awards 2026. The win recognises Satalia’s transformative work with Waitrose to optimise its home delivery network using AI.

The award-winning project has transformed the way Waitrose plans and manages its home deliveries, using an AI-powered optimisation platform to handle the thousands of decisions involved in delivering groceries efficiently at scale.

Balancing variables including traffic conditions, vehicle capacity, delivery time windows, demand and seasonal peaks, the solution helps Waitrose make optimal use of its fleet while giving customers greater choice and convenience.

Working closely with Waitrose’s operations teams, Satalia developed, tested and refined the platform around the realities of the supermarket’s delivery operation, including a simulation of the busy 130-vehicle Coulsdon hub during peak Christmas demand.

Now live across Waitrose’s network of 170 stores, two Customer Fulfilment Centres and a fleet of 1,400 vans, the solution supports around 160,000 home deliveries every week – more than 8.3 million deliveries each year.

The project has delivered significant improvements across the network, including a 10% reduction in operational costs, an 8% reduction in delivery mileage and a 12% increase in drops per route. 

Customer delivery slot availability has increased by 4% despite rising delivery volumes, and the flagship Coulsdon site has increased today-for-tomorrow delivery slots by 50%.

“By harnessing AI-powered technology, we can now offer customers more precise and convenient delivery times while significantly reducing our environmental impact,” says Pav Kalia, Head of Change Delivery and Technology, Waitrose.

“This is a brilliant example of how technology can help us deliver on our promises of both exceptional service and sustainability.”

“Optimising a network like Waitrose’s means making thousands of complex decisions every day,” says Daniel Hulme, CEO, Satalia. “The results show how AI can tackle those decisions and deliver real benefits for the business, its customers and its sustainability goals. This is AI solving a real-world problem at scale.”

The success of the project reflects the strength of the partnership between Waitrose and Satalia. By combining Satalia’s expertise in AI and optimisation with Waitrose’s deep understanding of its operations, the two teams continue to identify new opportunities to improve efficiency, enhance the customer experience and support sustainability goals.

For more information about the project, click here to read the case study.

About Satalia

Satalia, part of WPP, is a global leader in AI and optimisation solutions. The company specialises in solving complex operational challenges through advanced artificial intelligence, optimisation and machine learning. From logistics and supply chain optimisation to workforce planning and decision intelligence, Satalia helps organisations become more efficient, sustainable and resilient by combining world-class AI with an expert team that delivers measurable business outcomes.

About the Supply Chain Excellence Awards
Having seen 29 prior editions, the Supply Chain Excellence Awards stand alone as the standard for best practices in European supply chain management. The awards are known for their thorough judging procedure delivering valuable insights to entrants through feedback from our esteemed judges, who collectively hold over 750 years of experience.