Ocado Smart Platform

Ocado made a loss of £9million in the first half of this financial year despite announcing a “transformative” deal with supermarket group Kroger.

The online retailer enjoyed a revenue rise of 21.1 per cent to £799m, but EBITDA fell 13.9 per cent to £38.9m. Factoring in depreciation and amortisation, costs amounting to £47.9m pushed the company into a loss.

The group has been the fastest grower of all supermarkets in recent years, and is currently expanding with a new Erith warehouse, slated to be the world’s largest automatic warehouse.

Order volumes rose by 11.9 per cent to 291,000 on this time last year, with their vans also delivering more per week. Their waste to landfill was kept at an industry low of 0.02 per cent.

The company described their partnership with Kroger as “a game changer” and said it aims to add 200-300 more software engineers this year, as well as new leadership structure for Ocado Technology.