Simplexity Robotics and Hangcha launch a supermarket warehouse robot sorting line
Chinese startup Simplexity Robotics (Zhijian Dongli) said on November 6 that it and Hangcha Group, the Shanghai-listed forklift maker (603298), had completed what it called the first robot sorting line for a supermarket forward warehouse, the small urban sites that fill online grocery orders. Beijing Business Today reported the announcement.
The line chains AMR feeding, robot task planning with dexterous grasping and flipping, barcode verification and order put-wall sorting. Simplexity says each robot sorts up to 450 items an hour with accuracy above 98%. These are company figures from its own tests, not independent measurements.
No supermarket customer, robot count, price or payback period was disclosed.
Servospace take: the interesting part is the channel. A forklift incumbent selling a packaged picking cell is a faster route into warehouses than a startup selling robots one by one.
Why it matters
Small grocery fulfillment sites are hard to automate. They carry thousands of mixed items in boxes, bags and bottles, and orders are small. A robot that can pick a mixed tote item by item and drop each into the right order slot goes after the most labor-heavy step.
The numbers are claims. Beijing Business Today said Simplexity reported a measured peak of 450 items an hour per robot and accuracy "stable above 98%" using vision, a vision-language-action (VLA) planning model and dexterous manipulation. A peak rate is not sustained shift throughput, and 98% accuracy still means about two misses per 100 items, which is why the line includes a barcode check before items are sorted to orders.
A summary of Simplexity's WeChat post published by RoboHot adds that the line was completed on November 3, uses a robot body called iX that Simplexity customized for Hangcha, handles items without modeling each SKU separately, and can run 24 hours under full load. Those details come from the company's post and were not independently checked.
For comparison, Simplexity's own website says its i7 Pro robot sorts mixed parcels and cartons at more than 1,500 items an hour. Grocery item picking at 450 an hour is a much slower and harder task.
Who makes money: Hangcha already sells forklifts, AGVs and full intelligent-logistics systems. Its English site says it sold more than 330,000 units worldwide in 2025 and ranks among the top eight industrial truck makers. That installed base lets it bundle a picking robot into a system sale. Simplexity gets an industrial distribution partner. Watch for a named grocer, a second site and unit pricing. Until then, this is one line, not a rollout.
More on robot business and funding.
Sources
- Beijing Business Today via Sina Finance (Nov. 6, 2026): Simplexity Robotics and Hangcha Group complete supermarket forward-warehouse robot sorting line (Chinese)
- Beijing Business Today via 10jqka (Nov. 6, 2026), lists Hangcha Group as 603298 (Chinese)
- RoboHot summary of Simplexity Robotics' WeChat post (Nov. 6, 2026): completed Nov. 3, custom iX robot body, 24-hour operation claim (Chinese)
- Simplexity Robotics solutions page: i7 Pro retail and logistics sorting claim of more than 1,500 items per hour
- Hangcha Group company page: founded 1956, Shanghai-listed 2016, more than 330,000 units sold worldwide in 2025, AGVs and warehouse equipment
New to robots? Read our guide: AutoStore's 2,050 systems: what the installed base proves and leaves out.
Summarized by Servospace from the sources above, drafted with AI help and checked against those sources before publishing. Claims are the companies' or outlets' unless we say otherwise. How we work.