Shekel Brainweigh at the forefront of the autonomous retail revolution

With the world of retail shifting to a more autonomous future, Shekel Brainweigh (ASX: SBW) is at the forefront of the transition with its innovative technologies for the sector.

The retail market is on the cusp of a digital and frictionless shopping revolution and Shekel has created its retail innovations division to develop technologies to lead the way.

Shekel already has established a global presence with long-term clients in Israel, the United States, Europe, Australia, Japan and Brazil.

Several of its retail innovation products are also in operation in Israel, the UK, Europe and Australia – with this set to rapidly expand.

Retail transactions through autonomous checkout technologies alone are predicted to increase from US$2 billion in 2020 to reach US$387 billion by 2025.

To facilitate this shift to contactless shopping, retailers are expected to invest around US$23 billion in artificial intelligence, which is up from US$5 billion in 2020.

Another opportunity in this global retail transition to automation is big data, which Shekel plans to harness and sell.

Driving the shift

According to Shekel chief business development officer Rami Bahar there is a “significant increase” in demand for small urban grocery stores to service young and small families.

“With smaller homes and tight schedules, shoppers are looking to purchase the same day dinner near their home – sometimes ready-made fresh and healthy food.”

Assisting this move is a growth in convenience store product offerings, with a focus on healthier and more customised products.

In line with this consumer shift, there has been a rise in new technologies allowing for automation in payments and inventory management.

“These small groceries with limited selection and shoppers’ traffic cannot afford labour intensive services, and autonomous shop models are critical to present realistic return on investment,” Mr Bahar explained.

“Shekel’s solutions can be found everywhere in global retail markets: from unattended vending points-of-purchase through to multiple models of autonomous and hybrid grocery stores, as well as self-checkout and smart carts in super and hyper markets.”

“No other company offers that,” Mr Bahar added.

The smart vending machine market is currently around US$1.6 billion, and this is forecast to grow to US$3 billion in 2027.

Although currently small, the market for unmanned convenience stores is worth about US$67.5 million and is predicted to expand to US$1.64 billion by 2027.

Shekel at the forefront of the global transition

Leveraging its AI and machine learning technologies combined with decades of knowledge and experience in providing weighing solutions, Shekel has created a retail innovation division for its business.

This division has already developed a suite of automation products that aim to transform the retail sector.

This year alone has seen the first autonomous store opened in the United States, which uses Shekel’s smart solutions for product identification and movement.

The US store opening in January attracted strong media and public interest with Shekel anticipating there is potential for further autonomous stores to open across the country.

Meanwhile, an autonomous store will be unveiled in Israel later in the current quarter. These new stores follow existing autonomous stores in France, and one in Germany.

The autonomous stores use Shekel’s “Product Aware shelves” along with Hitachi’s consumer tracking technology and UST’s digital solutions. Customers use a mobile app and make purchases from the product aware shelves and pay digitally.

Product Aware technology

Shekel’s Product Aware technology incorporates internet of things (IoT), AI, on-shelf electronics, software, and algorithms.

The technology is able to identify products and detect movement on the shelves and continues to be developed.

Using this technology, Shekel has created the Product Aware Bay, which comprises up to eight shelves.

It is these bays that are used in the autonomous stores.

Other innovations that incorporate Shekel’s Product Aware technology are the Innovendi and Hubz smart fridges.

These smart fridges have been described as the “new way of vending” and are already in use across numerous countries.

The vending machines are unattended micro smart coolers that enable owners to stock food and beverages closer to clients.

Consumers open the fridge by swiping their credit card. They can then grab food and beverages directly from the fridge, and their purchases are recognised and tallied when each item is taken. Items grabbed are then automatically calculated, and once the fridge door has closed, the customer’s credit card is automatically charged.

Vending machine owners pay Shekel for the hardware and an ongoing software as a services subscription.

Using these technologies, Shekel has developed the Micro Market Capsule, which is a single shopper autonomous store.

The Micro Market Capsule comprises the Product Aware Bays, Innovendi units and self-checkout technology.

“Shekel’s autonomous and hybrid store offerings enables retailers an affordable point of sale roll-out, with the lowest cost of ownership and clear profitability,” Mr Bahar explained.

“Avoiding expensive and time-consuming video files analytics, Shekel provides a perfectly frictionless experience, showing shoppers their basket status in real time while meticulously keeping their privacy.”

Smart carts

Shekel is also at the forefront of the smart cart technology for the retail space.

A2Z Smart Technologies has developed the Cust2Mate smart cart, which incorporates Shekel’s weighing technologies, including legal for trade and security scales.

Shekel says the smart carts allow efficient, accurate and trouble-free shopping – eliminating the need to search for supermarket weighing positions and checkout queues.

The units have advanced big data capabilities and communicate with store management – preventing fraud and automatically issuing re-stocking alerts.

Earlier this month, Shekel received its first order for its weighing units from A2Z.

The Cust2Mate is the world’s first proven-in-use mobile self-checkout shopping cart, which will be rolled-out across supermarket chains in Israel and the US.

Self-checkout technologies

As well as its other innovative retail technologies, Shekel has developed security scales for self-checkouts and its more advanced Fast Track technology.

“Shekel is dominating the grocery retail check-out zone – offering its weigh-based solutions to manned and unmanned check-out points,” Mr Bahar said.

Most self-checkout solutions currently rely on computer vision, RFID tags and traditional scales, which struggle to meet accuracy thresholds.

Shekel’s Fast Track technology was launched in January at the largest retail convention in NYC – US National Retail Federation Conference 2022.

The embedded deep learning technology has visual fruit and vegetable recognition capabilities that are incorporated in computer vision-based self-checkouts.

The technology solves a problem most retailers face at the self-checkout where fruit and vegetables can be mistaken or substituted for a cheaper alternative without detection.

Compared to current technologies, Fast Track’s accuracy is higher than 99% and more cost-effective.

Because it is AI-based, Fast Track requires no major infrastructure outlays and can be installed on existing computing devices.

Fast Track is also scalable and automatically updated across the network and can be incorporated in fully autonomous stores.

Data the new oil

With Shekel’s technologies able to capture data from every point of the product selection and sale process, the company plans to harness this and develop data insight products.

These data insight products can be purchased by retailers and product developers to provide critical insights into consumer engagement and behaviours.

Shekel describes data as “the new oil”.

The global big data and business analytics market was valued at about US$198 billion in 2020. It is estimated it will be worth more than US$684 billion by 2030 – equating to a 13.5% compound annual growth rate between 2021 and 2030.