FairPrice deploys autonomous vehicles for supply chain operations

FairPrice Group (FPG) has become the first organisation in Singapore to receive approval to use autonomous vehicles (AVs) on public roads for its supply chain operations.

The move will see a fleet of fully driverless electric vehicles transporting goods between the group’s distribution centres, automating a key part of its logistics network to keep shelves stocked across its retail businesses.

FPG has signed an agreement with autonomous driving technology company Zelos Technology to add close to 30 of its Zelos Z10 AVs to its fleet. Once deployed, these vehicles will make up nearly 30% of FPG’s entire vehicle fleet. Singapore’s Land Transport Authority gave FPG the green light to transition to remote AV operations in 2025, following successful trials that began in October 2024.

Vipul Chawla, group CEO of FPG, said: “FPG’s supply chain business is the key to delivering on our purpose of making every day a little better, by keeping daily essentials within reach for all in Singapore. Through this initiative with Zelos, we are bolstering our capability to support the nation’s supply resilience by introducing innovation that makes our supply chain operations more efficient, sustainable and digitally enabled.”

The Zelos Z10, the first fully driverless logistics AV approved for Singapore’s public roads, will be used to transport palletised stocks such as ambient produce, packaged products and other essentials.

Running on electric batteries, each vehicle, which has a load capacity of up to 1.5 tonnes and a range of up to 210km on a single charge, is expected to lower FPG’s carbon dioxide emissions by 27 tonnes per year.

Lee Pak Sing, assistant managing director at Enterprise Singapore, which worked with FPG to develop the business case for using AVs, said the milestone “breaks new ground and allows us to explore more commercially viable use cases within the logistics sector”.

For Zelos Technology, a China-based firm, the deployment marks its first successful overseas venture and a key step in its global expansion. Its managing director, Terry Zhou, said the collaboration dramatically reduces supermarket logistics costs and lays a “solid foundation” for building a nationwide transportation capacity platform in Singapore to serve diverse freight needs in the future.

FPG’s AV initiative is part of its wider push to build a more sustainable and technologically advanced supply chain. This includes using artificial intelligence (AI) in its supply chain operations centre to monitor its entire network, and expanding its electric vehicle fleet, which is expected to exceed 160 vehicles by the end of 2030.

In August 2025, it also teamed up with Google Cloud to deploy a range of agentic AI applications and capabilities designed to improve customer experience and employee efficiency.

These include AI-powered smart shopping carts and specialised in-store assistants that have been rolled out at the FairPrice Finest store in Singapore’s Punggol Digital District, as well as an internal platform to help staff build their own AI agents.