Kesko picks Manhattan Active Warehouse for Finland

Kesko has selected Manhattan Active Warehouse to replace its grocery warehouse management system. The rollout will cover five distribution centres and terminal hub operations in Finland.

The project focuses on Kesko's grocery logistics network, as the retailer moves away from a legacy warehouse system and seeks a new operational base for its supply chain. The deployment will also include Manhattan's AI tools, Manhattan Active Agents and Agent Foundry.

Kesko is one of the largest retail groups in Northern Europe, with operations in grocery, building and technical trade, and car trade. In grocery, the scale of its Finnish business makes the warehouse overhaul notable in a sector where retailers are under pressure to improve fulfilment reliability while managing store networks, online orders and supplier flows through the same infrastructure.

According to figures disclosed with the announcement, Kesko's grocery trade recorded net sales of EUR 6.5 billion in 2025 and comparable operating profit of EUR 418 million. The division includes K-food stores and Kespro, giving the group a broad wholesale and retail grocery footprint.

System change

The initial scope covers five distribution centres and terminal hub operations. The programme will later extend to a greenfield site, adding the software to another facility.

Beyond the core warehouse management system, Kesko expects to deploy Manhattan's Wave Coordinator, Labour, and Warehouse Associate Agents. It is also considering other agent-based tools through Agent Foundry to support inbound operations.

The move reflects a broader shift among large retailers replacing older warehouse systems with cloud-based platforms that update continuously rather than through periodic major upgrades. For grocery operators, these systems increasingly sit at the centre of inventory flow, labour allocation and service levels across store replenishment and eCommerce activity.

Pekka Tala, Director Strategic Programs, Grocery Trade Logistics at Kesko, said the retailer wants to build "a warehouse and technology foundation that evolves without the disruption traditionally associated with enterprise software upgrades, while also leveraging the transformative power of agentic AI to gain operational efficiencies and unlock previously unseen opportunities".

Pressure on on-time delivery and order accuracy is a key factor in logistics investment across food retail, where margins are thin and customer switching costs are low.

"If you break an on-time-in-full promise a customer will simply find an alternative, which sets the stakes high," Tala said.

He also pointed to the scale of the rollout and the operational demands of handling live warehouse data across multiple sites. "Initially covering five distribution centres, followed by a greenfield site (in 2029-30), plus a range of terminal hub operations, being able to interpret and act on operational signals in real time is key for us," he said.

Nordic focus

The agreement underlines the importance of the Nordic grocery sector for warehouse software suppliers, particularly as the region's large retail groups look to connect store replenishment, wholesale distribution and online order fulfilment more closely. Finland's grocery market is concentrated, and major investments in logistics systems can materially affect service levels and operating costs.

For Manhattan, the Kesko contract adds a high-profile grocery customer in Northern Europe. The company supplies software used to manage warehouse operations, transport and broader commerce processes, and has been pushing its cloud-based product suite and embedded AI tools as retailers revisit older technology estates.

Sebastien Lefebure, Senior Vice President, EMEA at Manhattan, said retailers increasingly see warehouse projects as an opportunity for competitive differentiation. "This project represents more than the simple replacement of a legacy WMS; it is an opportunity to drive competitive advantage."

He added that the benchmark for warehouse and supply chain platforms is shifting towards systems with AI functions built directly into day-to-day execution. "The continuous innovation delivered by Manhattan's cloud-native platform, coupled with the functional power of AI embedded in the execution layer of supply chains is increasingly becoming the benchmark against which next-generation supply chain platforms will be measured, and Kesko is at the forefront of the application of this technology in the Nordic grocery space," Lefebure said.