I do automation consulting as part of my job (amongst other consulting for logistics) and can anecdotally say that automation enquiries have gone down slightly.

I do automation consulting as part of my job (amongst other consulting for logistics) and can anecdotally say that automation enquiries have gone down slightly. Business cases for logistics automation work best when you have stable demand (so you can get good utilisation out of the kit, and know how much you need to build) and the level of uncertainty means it’s tough to work out what your order pattern might look like in the future. It’s also much harder to scale up an automated site during growth periods compared to a manual one. I suspect there will be a lag on investment as companies work out what post-covid demand patterns look like.