Automatic ordering system

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. First of all, I would like to apologize for reading this presentation, because although I speak Polish, I think it will be better for all of us if I read the text rather than trying to speak without it.

Secondly, I would like to introduce myself. As you can see on the slide, my name is Trevor Ashworth and I am the Logistics Director at Jeronimo Martins Group across its entire area of operations. However, from February 1997 to December 1999, I lived and worked as the Logistics Director in Poland.
I am sure that almost everyone in this room has heard of Jumbo, Biedronka, and Eurocash operating in Poland, which are part of the Jeronimo Martins Dystrybucja group. Today, the group consists of over six hundred discount stores, eighty cash & carry stores, and three hypermarkets.

Both the discount chain and the cash & carry are supplied by a logistics network of Distribution Centers, which are shown on the next slide.

As you can see on this slide, we currently have 83,000 square meters of Distribution Center space in Poland with the capacity to deliver 12,500,000 packages per month. We also have plans for further expansion of 32,000 square meters of Distribution Centers this year and we plan to deliver almost 150,000,000 packages throughout the year. The next slide shows the growth in the number of packages delivered to our stores since January 1997.

Based on this slide, you can see that the number of packages delivered monthly between January 1997 and July 1999 increased by over 430%, and it will be even higher in the busiest month of the year – July, when the growth will be over 650% higher compared to January, when we started developing our distribution network.

I would just like to point out at this moment that during my entire time working in Poland, no foreigner worked in my team, except for me of course, and I am very proud to say that such a good result was achieved solely by the Polish staff. By the end of this year, we will have over 100,000 square meters of warehouse space, we will employ over 1,500 people, having invested over 250,000,000 PLN in the Distribution Center network alone. I would also like to point out that our total logistics costs expressed as a percentage of turnover are at least as good as the average level for the European Union.

So, I would like to continue with the most important part of my presentation on the development of the automatic ordering system in our stores.

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