As we said last week, Morrisons and Ocado have been preparing for something big - which we suspected was the long awaited Morrisons.com entry into to the London market.
On Friday we reported Ocado was recruiting 1,000 staff for a number of business areas - but most notably its London-based hubs. Today the Financial Times newspaper reports that Morrions will begin selling groceries online in London on May 12, a month earlier than planned.
The plan perhaps explains why Ocado has been recruiting like mad - and particularly around key London satellite hubs in Wimbledon and Ruislip.
Morrisons signed a £200 million partnership with Ocado a year ago and is using the internet delivery firm's new giant automated hub at Dordon in the Midlands. Morrisons.com launched in January and was extended to include Yorkshire a month later.
In a similar manner to the Yorkshire plan, which allows Morrisons to use Ocado's Leeds hub to deliver, Morrisons will use to Ruislip centre to access around 400,000 households in northwest London, the FT says. It has apparently chosen Ruislip because it gives it access to a diverse ethnic population mix which will give it a solid base of information about habits and demands as it extends into the wider London area.
Ocado and Morrisons operate online by shipping all their food for delivery to two main automated hubs in Hatfield in north London (used by Ocado) and Dordon (share by the two firms). It then sends out either vans for local deliveries or lorries to about a dozen satellite hubs which then dock and transfer goods to sprinter vans.
Morrisons is also expected to share space in the Ruislip satellite hub with Ocado.
Morrisons plans to serve 50 per cent of UK households online by the end of the year. It is also expected to begin offering a click and collect service in the second half as it tries to catch up with long-established dotcom business built up by Tesco, Sainsbury's and Asda.
As with its key rivals, Morrisons stores are under threat from discounters Aldi and Lidl and it appears to have suffered at their hands more than the other big three supermarkets. It announced in March its latest strategy overhaul that included £1 billion price cuts over three years.
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