Public & commercial displays

Hanshow says its smart carts are shipping in batches as Australian deal awaits orders

The Chinese shelf-label maker says its carts are in batch delivery, but the Woolworths agreement still depends on future orders.

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Cbot Crew

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A shopper in a supermarket aisle holds a package beside a green trolley fitted with a Scan&Go tablet and scanner, with groceries in the basket.
A Scan&Go tablet on a Woolworths trolley. Photo: Woolworths Group

Beijing-based Hanshow (汉朔科技), a maker of electronic shelf labels, told investors on Oct. 21 that its smart shopping carts are in batch delivery, without naming a buyer. Its largest disclosed cart deal is with Australian supermarket group Woolworths: in January, Hanshow said it expects to supply 10,800 cart systems for about 300 stores, the first phase of a sales-intention agreement for a new generation of Woolworths’ Scan&Go trolleys, which let shoppers scan and bag groceries as they go.

The agreement isn’t an order yet. Progress depends on orders the two sides sign later, Hanshow said in a Jan. 5 stock-exchange notice, which gave no delivery dates. Hanshow has repeated its batch-delivery line in investor replies since mid-September. It is to supply the hardware, operating system and cloud platform for the carts, which the notice describes as AI-driven and paired with cameras.

The Scan&Go Trolley uses a Hanshow Smart Cart tablet with a retractable barcode scanner, Hanshow said in February 2025. Shoppers unlock the tablet with their loyalty card and attach it to their trolley, according to a Woolworths August release. At a self-checkout, they scan a barcode on the tablet and pay without unloading the trolley, Region Canberra reported. Woolworths’ releases don’t say what the trolleys mean for checkout staff.

Hanshow also sells electronic shelf labels to grocers in Croatia and Slovenia. Its results don’t break out cart sales. Group-wide, revenue rose 59.4% from a year earlier to 4.48 billion yuan (about US$667 million) in the first nine months of 2026, mainly on deliveries to big customers, its third-quarter report said.

Woolworths’ Australian rival, Coles, turned to smart carts too. It became the first grocer in the Asia-Pacific region to deploy Instacart’s Caper Carts, in February 2025, Chain Store Age reported. Those carts use cameras, a built-in scale and an AI system to recognize items as shoppers put them in.

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Editor: Ian Lamont

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