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The fresh food people work hard to get food to places far beyond the big city lights of metropolitan Australia – not only by road, but by sea and air too.

North, east, west and south - we go almost anywhere in Australia, and above and beyond to provide home deliveries to our customers, including a regular service 600km off the east coast!

While we’re used to seeing the familiar Woolworths delivery vans on suburban roads, Woolworths help provide the same service to some of the most remote places in Australia - to islands and well into the bush.

Alistair Venn is our General Manager of Last Mile Delivery. He said, “If customers want us to deliver to their home or business, we’ll do our best to help get their shopping to them almost anywhere within reason by road, sea and air.”

We use barges, ferries and planes for some of our more unconventional home deliveries.

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SS Woolies at Lord Howe Island Wharf

One of the furthest regular delivery routes is to Lord Howe Island, 600 km off the east coast, operated by a cargo vessel dubbed “SS Woolies” by locals (pictured left). It makes the trip every fortnight, carrying orders packed by our Lake Cathie store near Port Macquarie on the mainland.

Further south, hundreds of customers on King Island, 340km north-west of Tasmania, receive their Woolies shop by plane and there’s no pesky excess baggage fees!

We also cross the seas to deliver groceries to customers in the Tiwi Islands, Magnetic Island and to smaller islands off the coast of Brisbane.

And of course, we deliver to the outback - including 40 cattle stations across WA and NT, several mines and a number of remote indigenous communities. Our customers in these remote parts of Australia tend to group their shopping with their neighbours and make one big order to be delivered by road, barge or plane. We’ve set up a special system just for them.

Map showing remote delivery locations Remote locations in the bush and on islands which Woolworths helps deliver special orders to.

 

Next time you see a team member packing an online order in store, it might be going further than you think!

 

Read more about what goes on behind the counter at Woolwoths Group on our blog - Check it out.