Case Study – Coles Southland

Mainbrace’s Victorian supermarket refurbishment division is consistently busy. As a superior Melbourne retail construction company, we welcome a challenge and thrive on being engaged from the outset. At Coles Southland, in Melbourne’s southeast, we converted an ECI project into a full refurbishment for a store of the future.

Another success for our retail builder

Coles Southland is another success story and example of Mainbrace’s ECI model translating to a fully-realised construction project that delivered enhanced cost and time efficiencies for our client.

The 25-week program involved a full refurbishment and upgrade of the 5,285sqm supermarket to include a range of new inclusions, advancements and diversifications. The Southland supermarket is an innovation store for Coles. It is a store of the future where new ideas and concepts are implemented for smarter selling and a more efficient, streamlined shopping experience for consumers.

Mainbrace collaborated with Coles and other project partners to deliver some interesting concepts – including some being the first of their kind – and the project was completed on schedule in November 2022.

An innovation store

Coles Southland has many points of difference including:

• Installation of a new evolution of automated checkouts.
• First time implementation of digital shelf labelling, like that which surrounds the ground at major sporting events, was installed.
• A unique colour scheme was adapted, creating a shopping environment unlike that of other stores.

These innovations and adaptations required close collaboration between Mainbrace and the Coles team. We have a long-standing relationship with Coles, but some of these changes were firsts for us as well – so the experience was both exciting and valuable for all parties.

Sustainable builders enabling green outcomes

In line with the innovative nature of the Coles Southland store, Mainbrace sustainable builders investigated new ways to generate better environmental outcomes throughout the project.

One example of this was the opportunity to use 100% recyclable hoarding. Mainbrace collaborated with Coles to introduce the UK & Australian based company, Plasloc to the project. Plasloc makes an environmentally clean alternative to standard building materials, and the recyclable hoarding at Coles Southland was the first time it has been used for a Coles supermarket. Due to its success, there are further potential applications to be explored in the future.

A bright future

Coles Southland is one of the largest and most significant supermarket refurbishment projects Mainbrace has undertaken. We were delighted to embrace new and exciting approaches to retail construction and sustainable building and we look forward to further evolving as we move onto future projects.