Sainsbury's technology cuts queues by 500,000 hours a year

Supermarket chain partners with NCR to bring in more self-service checkouts and denser lasers

New technology at Sainsbury's tills will cut down queuing times and save paper

Sainsbury'shas said it will make a multimillion-pound investment in additional check-out technology that will cut customer queue times by more than 500,000 hours a year.

The supermarket chain will continue its ongoing partnership with technology provider NCR to introduce self-service checkouts to a further 330 stores.

Sainsbury’s deployed its first self-service checkouts to more than 240 stores across the UK last year.

In addition to the checkouts, it will introduce new barcode scanning technology for manned and unmanned tills in each of its UK stores.

The technology will see checkouts enabled with several lasers rather than one, meaning the laser will be denser and longer. This will mean scratched or damaged barcodes can be more easily scanned.

The company estimates that the technology will cut queue waiting times for customers by 12 per cent, or 500,000 hours each year.

However, despite the introduction of the new technology and more self-service checkouts, Sainsbury’s insists that it will not follow up the move by making staff cuts.

The new technology also allows the self-service checkouts to print double-sided receipts, which will reduce the amount of paper used by more than 350 tonnes each year, according to the company.

"We know that lots of our customers really value the speed and convenience of self-service checkouts, particularly when they are just popping into our stores for a quick shop. However, we are as always committed to offering all our shoppers a choice between the two systems,” said Roger Burnley, Sainsbury's retail and logistics director.