Annual report & accounts 2021

For more than two decades, grocery has been steadily migrating online, and the pandemic has only accelerated this transition. And data suggests that, for many, this new way of shopping will become the norm.

Several of the world’s largest grocery retailers have already chosen OSP to deliver a market-leading shopping experience to their own customers. And the accelerated channel shift to online means that these partners will need to move faster to meet their customers’ needs. So the opportunity in both existing and new markets is large.

As a leading technology business and serial innovator we’re solving complex problems in online grocery fulfilment to enable our OSP clients to win the battle for online grocery taking place worldwide; consistently improving the OSP platform so that our retail partners can grow their online businesses even faster, more cheaply and with better flexibility. We showcased seven key developments that represent the next leap in OSP technology at a product launch at the end of January. Hear what CEO Tim Steiner and CFO Stephen Daintith think the impact and value of these investments will be in our financial results presentation.

Our focus is on growing and strengthening existing client partnerships and establishing new partnerships. During 2021 we signed Alcampo in Spain bringing our leaders group of international partners to 10.

Despite the disruption to travel and supply chains, in FY21 we doubled our live international CFCs. We launched these sites on time, and our other projects remain on track. In addition to CFCs, 7 partners are now live on the platform, with 6 using our ISF solution, in retail premises and dark stores.

During 2022 we expect to nearly double the number of live CFCs, and for the first time expect to launch more internationally than in our home market of the UK.

To empower our partners to get the most out of OSP, we’ve continued to put collaboration at the heart of our partnerships with the OSP leader club. This includes sharing learnings from our operations and enabling partners to share learnings across the core themes and touchpoints of the online grocery value chain.

UK Solutions & Logistics

In the UK we built capacity at our fastest pace to match increased demand for our partners Ocado Retail and Morrisons. This includes: Purfleet Ocado Group’s second largest OSP CFC in the UK, the first mini-CFC in Bristol which is an important part of the fulfilment ‘ecosystem’ and the reopening of Andover, two years after the fire.

Going forward, Ocado Retail has another site set to launch in 2022 in Bicester, which will bring an additional opportunity capacity of 30,000 per week. We’re helping them to expand their presence in the immediacy market, with the planned launch of four more Zoom sites in 2022. And another CFC planned, in Luton, is planned for 2023, which will bring total potential capacity at maturity to around 700,000 orders per week.

Notwithstanding temporary growth constraints associated with a fire at Erith and industry-wide labour market challenges in the UK, Ocado Retail showed resilient trading performance, and continued strong margin performance.

With the launch of three new sites, the business has increased growth capacity compared to the end of 2020 and is ready to make the most of the continued strong demand for online grocery.

We are leveraging our technological know-how to drive additional value to the business both ourselves and in partnership with others in grocery and beyond.

We’re continuing to innovate and automate our CFCs further with notable advances in Robotic Pick and the launch of the 500Series bot in 2021. The bot is a more cost-effective module designed entirely in-house from 100% new components and enables more seamless maintenance.

We currently have seven strategic investments and ventures, with two new investments and strategic partnerships in autonomy formed in 2021. Through participating and empowering disruptive change in new verticals, tangible to our grocery mission, we believe we can materially increase the long-term value potential of the OSP platform and Ocado Group.

Our investments and ventures include:

• Jones Food Company (Vertical Farming)
• 80 Acres (Vertical Farming)
• Oxbotica (Autonomy)
• Wayve (Autonomy)
• Karakuri (Automated Meal Prep)
• Inkbit (3D Printing)
• Myrmex (Automation)

Alongside these we have successfully integrated the Kindred Systems and Haddington dynamics teams and continue to support them to grow their client base in general merchandise in addition to accelerating our progress towards the commercialisation of a robotic picking solution in grocery in the next couple of years.

We are committed to ensuring sustainable value creation for all our stakeholders. The business has evolved significantly over the last few years and we are now rapidly scaling into our role as a global software and robotics platform solutions provider. This required us to reassess our approach across key Environmental, Social and Governance (‘ESG’) issues for the business and its stakeholders.

Using our 2020 Materiality Assessment as a foundation, this year our ESG discovery phase transitioned into a delivery programme, in which we established an ESG Committee to provide governance over the delivery, and further progressed the delivery of an ESG strategy.

As part of our broader ESG activities, during the year we also approved a new Corporate Responsibility strategy, Ocado Unlimited, which included setting net-zero targets for both our operations and value chain.

For the coming year, our priorities focus on three areas:

1. Underpinning ESG with robust KPIs in line with our new Group strategy
2. Delivering key strategic ESG projects on the path to meet net-zero operations by 2035
3. Strengthening our risk management process by embedding climate risk and scenario analysis complemented by full disclosure to TCFD

You can learn more about some of our ongoing work here:

• Our key policies and statements, including modern slavery, gender pay, carbon emissions
• Details about our underlying deliverables on the path to net-zero in our operations by 2035 and value chain by 2040
• Our 2020 materiality assessment, which underpins the refresh of our ESG strategy
• Our approach to corporate governance, including key documents, policies and procedures and risk management