Manhattan Associates has won a contract to replace Kesko’s grocery warehouse management system, with an initial rollout covering five distribution centres. The agreement, announced on 13 October, puts delivery reliability and warehouse execution at the centre of the Finnish retailer’s technology investment.

Kesko selected ActiveWarehouse, Manhattan’s cloud-based platform, with AI tools for coordinating picking waves, managing labour and supporting warehouse employees. Terminal operations and a new facility planned for 2029–30 are also in scope. The companies have not disclosed the contract value or an initial go-live date.

Pekka Tala, Kesko’s director of strategic programmes for grocery trade logistics, said: “If you break an on-time-in-full promise a customer will simply find an alternative, which sets the stakes high.”

Kesko sits among Finland’s largest supermarket groups. Its grocery division generated €6.5 billion in net sales in 2025, serving K-food stores and the Kespro foodservice business.

The contract gives Manhattan a grocery reference for connecting decisions with physical warehouse work. Whereas demand forecasting platforms help determine what stock a retailer needs, warehouse systems help translate that requirement into received goods, picked orders and dispatches. Better forecasts still need dependable execution to improve shelf availability.

For suppliers, the practical questions concern delivery appointments, advance shipment notices and accurate case and pallet data. Before any changeover, trading partners will need clarity on interface testing, labelling requirements and escalation routes. Those are implementation questions for the project, not new supplier obligations announced in the release.

Fresh and chilled ranges add another consideration: a faster picking process is useful only if shelf-life handling, order accuracy and temperature controls remain dependable. Retail procurement teams should assess warehouse changes against service measures such as on-time-in-full delivery, rejected loads and waste, rather than treating AI deployment itself as evidence of improvement.

Kesko is also exploring custom AI agents for inbound operations. No quantified savings or service gains were disclosed. The next milestones to watch are the deployment timetable and the arrangements for maintaining grocery deliveries during the transition.

Editor’s note: Based on Manhattan Associates’ announcement dated 13 October 2026, with GTN analysis of supplier readiness, delivery continuity and warehouse performance.