5 Automation Trends Shaping Ecommerce in 2026

Most people still picture ecommerce logistics as shelves, pickers and parcels on vans.

That model still exists. But it is no longer competitive at scale.

In 2026, the fastest-growing brands are not competing on marketing alone. They are competing on infrastructure, and automation is what determines whether that infrastructure scales or breaks.  

At THG Fulfil, we have spent over two decades building and operating our own fulfilment infrastructure across the UK, US, Europe, Australia and the Middle East, not as a theoretical exercise, but as the backbone for some of the world's most demanding ecommerce brands. Across 4.5 million sq ft of automated facilities and more than 80 million units fulfilled annually, this is what we are actually seeing. 

1. Warehouse robotics and goods-to-person picking 

For years, warehouse robotics was positioned as the future. In 2026, brands still relying on manual picking are not just slower; they are structurally more expensive per order and less consistent at peak.

The shift that has made the biggest practical difference is not the robot itself but the model it enables goods-to-person picking, where inventory travels to the operator rather than the other way around. Reducing walking time alone can transform unit economics. Combined with AI-driven sequencing, which determines the optimal order in which SKUs should be presented, pick rates drastically improve and accuracy approaches the kind of figures that manual operations cannot sustain at volume.

The question for most brands is no longer whether to automate. It is how quickly they can access infrastructure that already has. When Holland & Barrett migrated over 8,500 SKUs into an automated network, the goal was not speed alone. It was achieving consistent inventory visibility across 727 physical stores and a growing DTC channel simultaneously; a level of omnichannel control that manual warehousing structurally could not provide. 

2. AI-powered demand forecasting and inventory optimisation

Overstock and stockouts are not, at their root, a supply chain problem. They are a data problem.  

AI-powered demand forecasting gives you the ability to act on data that was always there but arrived too late. When machine learning models run continuously across real-time sales signals and connected inventory systems, replenishment decisions can be automated with confidence. The result is less overstock, fewer stockouts and the ability to position inventory in advance of demand rather than in response to it.

The integration between a brand’s trading platform and its fulfilment partner’s systems is not a technical detail here. It's the entire point. Biossance came to our network with global ambitions and a US-centric operation that was holding them back: high cost-per-unit, fragmented visibility and a poor customer experience. Connecting their inventory to our globally integrated platform was an operational change that unlocked the international growth the brand had been building towards. 

3. Automated sortation and multi-carrier last-mile injection 

Last-mile delivery is the most expensive part of ecommerce logistics but can also be the least visible. Parcels leave the warehouse and then, largely, disappear; handled by a single carrier, on a single contract, with limited recourse when performance drops or costs rise.  

Automated sortation can change this. When a fulfilment centre can route each individual parcel to the optimal carrier at the moment of dispatch, based on real-time data, the economics improve substantially. Carrier diversity can also create resilience. A single carrier failure during peak no longer means failed peak.

The advantage is not the number of carriers. It’s the ability to switch between them in real time when costs, capacity or performance change. 

4. Automated returns processing and reverse logistics 

Returns is not just a cost, but a revenue recovery problem, and automation can make this possible at scale.  

A returned item sitting in a processing queue for days, or weeks, is not just a cost. It is lost capital. Automated returns processing can compress that time dramatically, grading items in seconds and immediately routing stock back to the inventory pool. Brands that process returns in hours rather than days carry measurably less dead stock at any given moment.

There is a second dimension to reverse logistics: the customer experience impact. Slow credit issuance, poor returns tracking and confusing processes are damaging to brand loyalty. Getting returns right is not just an operational concern, it is a retention strategy.

Dermstore came to our network carrying the weight of a brand that had grown faster than its logistics infrastructure. Faster grading, faster credit issuance, faster resale. The downstream effect was a measurable improvement in customer satisfaction scores that had previously reflected the friction in the process, not the quality of the product. 

5. Access to automated infrastructure (not building it)

The trend that cuts across all of the above is not a specific technology. It is a change in how brands think about fulfilment infrastructure itself.

Building automated fulfilment infrastructure in-house is capital intensive, slow to implement and difficult to scale across multiple markets. For most brands, it is not a realistic path to keeping pace with demand.

Instead, the advantage is moving to operators who have already built it. This changes the question entirely. It is no longer “should we automate?” but “how quickly can we access infrastructure that already operates at scale?”

For brands expanding internationally, this becomes even more important. Replicating automation market by market introduces cost, complexity and risk. Plugging into a globally integrated network removes that friction, giving immediate access to established facilities, carrier relationships and operational consistency.

What matters is not ownership of infrastructure, but the ability to use it as if it were your own. 

The gap between automated and non-automated operations is no longer marginal. It shows up in cost per order, delivery speed, inventory accuracy and customer experience. 

Increasingly, it also shows up in how quickly a brand can access that capability. 

The brands that treat fulfilment infrastructure as a strategic asset, whether they build it or plug into it, will keep widening that gap. The rest will feel it in their margins.