Annual report & accounts 2020

There’s been a momentous shift towards online grocery shopping in markets around the world, resulting in an even greater need for a sustainable, scalable solution to online grocery fulfilment, and an even greater opportunity for Ocado Group.

For Ocado Retail it has been an extraordinary few months of growth, an even bigger opportunity lies ahead with the continuing channel shift to online.

For Ocado Solutions building sustainable, scalable offerings for grocery online is now top of the agenda in grocery boardrooms worldwide.

We have the capital - human and financial - to capitalise on our full opportunity in the medium term. We intend to invest in supporting our current and prospective partners to meet the global increase in demand for online grocery, and in innovating at a faster pace, to further expand our leadership position. We’ve reached some big milestones and we’re ready to go further, faster.

We are serving our partners’ needs, supporting them to go further and faster with their plans for online growth, by providing more capacity and flexibility with the OSP system. As the migration to online globally gains pace, we expect to add more partners to our platform, further strengthening the benefits of the OSP Leadership Club.

We are committed to ensuring change for the better of the world around us. We are committed to innovation that enables us, and our partners, to be better stewards of our planet, and to concrete policies and actions that protect decent work today whilst inspiring and educating the innovators of the future.

In Ocado Retail we have always been committed to enabling our customers to shop healthier, with more convenience. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, our model has also provided people with a safer way to shop when they needed it most. We’re also committed to meeting the needs of customers without compromising quality of life for future generations. We do this by focusing on four key areas: food waste, carbon impact, packaging waste, and responsible impact.

In Ocado Solutions we are continually optimising every aspect of the fulfilment and delivery life cycle. This drive for further efficiency ensures that we can meet our partners’ needs whilst minimising our impact on the planet.

Our purpose is reimaging shopping, by solving complex problems to provide sustainable solutions for online grocery.

Though our horizons have expanded with time, the things that make us tick have stayed the same: innovative thinking, teamwork and a passion for incredible customer service. For Ocado Group, this culture is defined by our values; that we are in this together, we are proud of what we do, and we can do it better.

We now have over 18,500 Ocado Group colleagues, each dedicated to doing their part. Our people demonstrated enormous pragmatism and resilience this year, amidst the worst of the global pandemic. Over 2020 we successfully delivered our first two international CFCs, ahead of plan, and ramped up capacity for our partners in the UK and internationally, much faster than planned to support demand for online.