About Us

• Ocado was founded in 2000 to revolutionise grocery shopping in the UK.
• With online grocery still in its infancy, Ocado emerged to disrupt traditional store and supply chain models, investing in a unique fulfilment model alongside new technologies to uncover hidden efficiencies.

• Just one year later, pilot deliveries began!
• 2002 saw our delivery area increase to cover 2.2 million households, aided by the opening of our first automated Customer Fulfilment Centre (CFC) in Hatfield.
• Hatfield was the earliest example of Ocado’s fulfilment, a prototype site - resulting in
  one of the most efficient online grocery fulfilment models in the world at the time. The fulfilment centre utilised hardware and software available at the time, to best meet our use case.

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• In 2005, we recognised off-the-shelf solutions could no longer meet our longer-term needs and began developing our own proprietary software solutions. This led to the development of an end-to-end platform, integrating web-shop, supply chain and last mile in one solution – later becoming the Ocado Smart Platform.
• In 2009, our iPhone app launched. This was a ground-breaking step for online grocery, as Ocado became the first business to launch a transactional shopping app in the UK.

• In 2010, Ocado Group listed on the London Stock Exchange, and we hit the milestone of over 100,000 orders delivered in a week for the very first time.
• In 2013, we launched our second fulfilment centre in Dordon serving ocado.com. This site also served our first logistics client, Morrisons.

• In 2016 and 2017, we opened two new CFCs in quick succession in Andover and Erith. These sites revolutionised the nature of fulfilment, introducing new bot and grid technology which is now operational in all of our global sites.
• These sites enabled us to store and manage inventory at a higher density, dramatically improve labour efficiency and grow in a modular way. An entire 50 item basket could now be fulfilled within just 15 minutes vs c.70 minutes in a store-based environment.

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• We had proved in one of the most competitive markets in the world that our offering through Ocado Retail delivered profitability and provided a world-class proposition with fresher products, greater choice, higher availability, competitive prices and delivery times.
• Multiple leading retailers around the world had approached Ocado to bring our expertise to their online operations.
• In 2018, we partnered with Bon Preu in Catalonia, Groupe Casino in France, ICA in Sweden, Kroger in the US and Sobeys in Canada.

• In 2019, we partnered with AEON in Japan and Coles in Australia.
• Ocado Group also entered into a new 50:50 joint venture with M&S
• We were preparing to go live with our first two international CFCs in France and Canada, bringing our market-leading technology to more customers across the globe.

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• In 2021, we signed a new international partnership with Alcampo in Spain, followed by partnerships with Lotte in South Korea and Auchan Retail in Poland the next year.
• That same year, we unveiled Ocado Re:Imagined, a series of the latest technological innovations powering our Ocado Smart Platform from On-Grid Robotic Pick to. Automated Frameload and the 600 Series Bot.

• In 2023, we launched Ocado Intelligent Automation (OIA), bringing fulfilment solutions to non-grocery industries for the very first time. That same year, OIA announced their first partner, global distribution company, McKesson in Canada.
• In 2024, we signed our 13th partnership with Panda in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, launched our first CFC in Australia with Coles, and our first CFC in Spain with Alcampo.

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