Israeli warehouses lost their pickers. The robot retrofit is ₪20 million.
Israel has been short roughly 110,000 foreign workers since October 2023, about 91% of them Palestinian, and a large share of the missing people worked supermarket distribution centres, third-party logistics (3PL) warehouses and food-industry depots. The government's reopened quota for "commerce and services" — 6,400 replacement permits — is roughly a fifth of what employers say they need. Carrefour Israel CEO Michael Loboshitz reports the chain is short twenty percent of its workforce at any given moment. Israeli 3PLs and food chains are now signing multi-million-shekel autonomous-mobile-robot retrofit contracts as the only durable fix.
01The pain
Michael Loboshitz of Carrefour Israel told Ynet in November 2025 that the chain is short twenty percent of its workforce at any given moment. Rami Levi, who owns the fifty-branch chain that carries his name, told Calcalist his stores received one thousand foreign workers and need seven hundred to eight hundred more. The missing people are warehouse pickers, sorters and forklift drivers.1
Since October 2023 Israel has been short roughly 110,000 foreign workers, about 91% of them Palestinian. Many worked the floors of supermarket distribution centres, 3PL warehouses (3PL is a third-party logistics operator, an outsourced warehouse business) and food-industry depots. The reopened government quota for commerce and services is 6,400 replacement permits. The Israel Chamber of Commerce puts the real need at about 30,000.2
The fix is no longer payroll. Sela Logistics, a 3PL operator, has installed goods-to-person robots from the Israeli vendor Caja Robotics; goods-to-person means autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) carry shelves to a worker at a fixed station, instead of the worker walking the aisles. Frozen-warehouse builder Yotron has signed a ₪20 million (~$5.3 million) voice-picking and AMR contract running to the third quarter of 2026; voice-picking means each worker receives pick commands through a headset. Israeli integrators now pitch the same retrofit to fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) buyers like Strauss and Tnuva. The bodies are not coming back; the racks are.3,4
Further reading
- 1 Ynet (Israeli daily) — November 2025 feature on the foreign-worker shortage in Israeli retail and food chains: Michael Loboshitz of Carrefour Israel on the chronic 20% workforce gap, Rami Levi on receiving 1,000 foreign workers and still needing 700–800 more, Hagai Shalom of Tiv Taam on uncompetitive labour supply at the highest wages in the sector: ynet.co.il / rjjspe5gwl
- 2 Calcalist (Israeli business daily) — Israel Chamber of Commerce CEO Gillit Rubinstein on the gap between the 6,400 government quota for commerce-and-services foreign workers and the ~30,000 employers say they need, framed against the post-October-2023 collapse in Palestinian work-permit utilisation: calcalist.co.il / sypzrcho1g
- 3 ice.co.il (Israeli real-estate and business news) — Yotron's ₪20 million frozen-warehouse build, with voice-picking and autonomous mobile robots, scheduled to run Q4 2024 through Q3 2026: ice.co.il / 1034081
- 4 Automated Warehouse Online — Caja Robotics' deployment of its goods-to-person autonomous-mobile-robot platform inside Sela Logistics, named as a leading Israeli 3PL operator: automatedwarehouseonline.com / caja-robotics-sela-logistics
02Who solves this today
Three Israeli warehouse-automation providers whose own product pages explicitly market autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), goods-to-person picking and warehouse retrofit packages to Israeli 3PLs (third-party logistics operators) and food-industry distribution centres. Each entry was checked live on the date of writing. The list is intentionally narrow — Israeli integrators that pitch warehouse retrofit only as a side line, or whose public product pages were primarily about factory-floor robots (palletisers, machine tending, packaging cobots) rather than picker-replacement AMRs, were considered and excluded; see the drop log under the cards.
Listed providers publicly market warehouse retrofit, AMR (autonomous mobile robot) and goods-to-person automation on their own product pages. Inclusion is not endorsement. Adjacent vendors and integrators were considered and excluded where their public pages did not confirm the niche on the date of writing — Servi-Tech (servi-tech.co.il) returned HTTP 200 with deep catalogues for industrial-automation, robotic palletising, Kawasaki and OB7 cobots, CNC machine tending and food-factory packaging robots, but its single warehouse-relevant product line ("robotics systems for work in logistics centres and packing houses") did not headline picker-replacement AMR retrofit and was dropped pending a re-check against a dedicated warehouse landing page; Park-Tek (parktek.co.il, www.parktek.co.il) failed DNS resolution and was dropped pending re-check; Yotron (www.yotron.co.il) — the operator of the ₪20 million voice-picking-plus-AMR build cited in Section 01 — also failed DNS resolution on the date of writing and was dropped pending re-check, even though its named contract is the strongest demand signal on the page. Tnuva-internal and Strauss-internal automation teams, the in-house engineering arms named in press coverage, are not third-party vendors and were not probed.
Report a mistake — or suggest a new solution
Spot a wrong number, dead source link, missing aspect, broken translation? Or know a vendor we should list as a solution? Tell us. The Director re-checks every report and either updates the page or writes back with a reason.
Got it — thank you.
The Director will look at your report on the next research cycle. If you left an email you'll hear back when we either update the page or decide it's not actionable (with a one-paragraph reason).
Listed companies — manage your entry. If you are one of the providers above and anything here is wrong, missing, or out of date — or you'd rather not be listed — let us know. Removal is processed within 24 hours; corrections within 7 business days. We do not contact listed companies first; we publish what your own public marketing claims and respond when you reach out. Email contact@aikraft.com.
Operators discussing this
Open operator-to-operator discussion of the Israeli warehouse-picker shortage lives mainly in closed Hebrew Facebook and WhatsApp groups of the Israel Chamber of Commerce and Lahav (the small-business association). The substitute trio below pairs one public Hebrew recruiting thread that confirms the niche identity with two named-operator press quotes carrying the same complaint. These are the reason this page exists.
-
«דרושים עובדי מחסן, מחסנאים, מלקטים, מלגזנים — בכל אזור הארץ — דחוף»
"Wanted — warehouse workers, sorters, pickers, forklift drivers — anywhere in the country — urgent."
"לוח דרושים לוגיסטיקה - מנהלי מחסן, אנשי תפ״י, מחסנאים, נהגים" · public Hebrew Facebook group for Israeli warehouse-operator recruitment — continuously refreshed warehouse-recruiting posts across 2024–2026 confirm the operator community is in chronic hiring mode
-
«בכל רגע נתון חסר לנו 20% מכוח העבודה»
"At any given moment we are short 20% of our workforce."
Michael Loboshitz, CEO of Carrefour Israel · Ynet, 18 November 2025 — speaking as the operator of a national supermarket chain
-
«המחסור בעובדים והמשבר בצפון הם אתגרים תפעוליים של התעשייה הישראלית; רק מעבר מואץ לאוטומציה יעניק פתרון יציב וארוך טווח»
"The labour shortage and the northern crisis are operational challenges for Israeli industry; only an accelerated move to automation will give a stable, long-term answer."
Mali Bitzur Parnas, CEO of TEFEN and chair of the Institute for Advanced Manufacturing · Calcalist — speaking as a senior figure of Israel's manufacturing-and-logistics association