Ocado rings up revenue surge of 21% as customer numbers rise

An online supermarket has announced that its revenues have grown by more than 20 per cent over the past six months.

Ocado, which concentrates on streamlining the online grocery shopping process, has reported that its revenues for the first half of this year are 21.4 per cent higher than they were in the same period last year.

This comes despite a lifting of pandemic restrictions which had made it harder for customers to shop in physical stores.

Ocado noted that basket sizes were 10 per cent lower than they had been at the beginning of the period, but that its customer base had increased by 22 per cent across the half, rising from 639,000 to 777,000.

Tim Steiner, CEO of Ocado Group, commented: “As we head towards a post Covid-19 future, it is increasingly clear that the landscape for grocery worldwide has changed, for good.

“Over the last eighteen months, we have shown that the Ocado model works even in the most challenging and fluid of environments.

“That ours is a proven model in online grocery has been again demonstrated by the strong performance of Ocado Retail, the historic core of the Ocado business, which has led the market in customer experience, increasing sales by 20 per cent in the period, thanks to a significant increase in customer numbers, while continuing to show sustainable and industry-leading profitable growth.

“Speed to market and resilience are critical attributes of the very flexible Ocado Smart Platform (OSP), the hardware and software solution which enables our partners in the UK and around the world to bring the benefits of the Ocado model to their customers.

“Our first mini Customer Fulfilment Centre (CFC), in Bristol, U.K., is now ramping faster than any facility before it.

“The speed at which the OSP has developed means that our partners can bring the best customer experience and the best economics to their customers faster.

“The model is resilient - as the imminent relaunch of Andover as a state of the art robotic CFC shows - and well suited to an environment where customers will ask grocers to offer solutions to a full range of customer missions from same day delivery to next day; big basket to immediacy; delivery to home or kerbside pick-up.

“We continue to build strong partnerships with our clients and win new clients, based on our twenty year experience as a technology company and a food retailer, and these partnerships are the bedrock of our business.

“Our partners will continue to benefit from the full suite of options available from OSP as well as high levels of innovation and problem-solving which is at the heart of Ocado’s DNA.

“Together, we are reshaping the grocery industry to the benefit of consumers around the world.”