Kim Vancauwenberghe

Colruyt Group is Belgium’s leading retail and food distribution group, operating more than 30 brands across food, health, energy, and B2B services. With annual revenues exceeding €11 billion and a workforce of approximately 31,000 employees, the group serves millions of customers through an integrated network of stores, e-commerce platforms, and supply chain operations. Its success is built on efficiency, sustainability, innovation, and long-term value creation.

Kim Vancauwenberghe joined Colruyt Group five years ago as Managing Director of Smart Innovation, the innovation hub of Colruyt Group. She brings more than 15 years of international leadership experience in operations, change management, business development, and technology-driven transformation. Within Colruyt Group, she leads initiatives in automation, engineering, and digitalization, supporting the accelerated transformation of the group’s production, supply chain, and store operations.

Innovation within Colruyt Group always starts from concrete business needs for which no suitable market solution exists. In such cases, Colruyt Group develops and validates proof-of-concepts internally and, once successful, scales them together with strategic partners to create mature, market-ready solutions.
A powerful example of this approach is the AXL iGo. In 2018, no market-ready solution existed to automate pull-away operations in Colruyt Group’s highly dense distribution centers, which feature some of the narrowest warehouse aisles in the industry, without requiring additional infrastructure. The expectation that the same solution could eventually automate both trailer loading and unloading was considered an ambitious long-term aspiration. In 2024, the first pilot was launched together with STILL to automate pull-away operations. Today, through this strategic partnership, STILL is proud to offer the market-ready AXL iGo, capable of performing pull-away as well as trailer loading and unloading. It demonstrates the true value of a win-win partnership, where deep operational expertise, industrial scale, and technological innovation come together to create solutions in co-creation.