(Alliance News) - Ocado Group PLC is considering expanding its retail operations to new markets outside the UK, the Financial Times reported Tuesday.
The online grocer will consider launching operations in regions where it does not have an existing supermarket customer, leaving several large markets in western Europe as possible targets.
"The pandemic, we believe, has permanently accelerated the channel shift [to e-commerce] and some of those markets that were behind the UK are more attractive for somebody to enter aggressively now than they were before the pandemic," Ocado Chief Executive & Co-Founder Tim Steiner told the newspaper in an interview.
"If we haven't got the right potential partner there, then they're more attractive for us to think about ourselves."
While Ocado's primary focus remains on expanding its large out-of-town warehouses, Steiner told the FT that, in the coming years, it may open up to 20 of its smaller Zoom sites, which support the company's one-hour-delivery service.
https://www.ft.com/content/e0e1e9a2-b617-45a6-8dfe-06feeff0b6de
By Will Paige; willpaige@alliancenews.com
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Ocado (OCDO)