Morrisons is expanding its delivery service in North East England, using picking from store.
The move represents a wider use of technology developed for Morrisons by Ocado to enable home delivery in areas where Morrisons has stores but Ocado doesn’t have fulfilment centres. As a result, says Morrisons, “more and more households will soon be able to access Morrisons.com.”
The update came as Morrisons this week released a third-quarter trading statement showing rising sales on a like-for-like (LFL) basis that strips out the effect of store openings and closures. Group LFL sales excluding sales rose by 2.5% in the 13 weeks to October 29, including a rise of 2.1% from retail and 0.4% from wholesale. Morrisons’ wholesale outlets include Amazon, which offers its groceries as part of its Amazon Prime same-day delivery service.
Growing sales came, said Morrisons, as more customers bought more from it. Popular initiatives, it said, included lower prices through its Price Crunch initiative.
Morrisons also said its new automated ordering system was now working in all stores. “We expect it to continue to improve availability and save time for colleagues in the important period ahead over Christmas and New Year,” it said in the trading statement.
Chief executive David Potts said: “We are pleased with a further step up in our competitiveness and another period of positive like for like sales growth. I am confident our plans to keep serving customers better will enable us to continue the strong momentum of the year so far, into the important fourth quarter.
“As we work towards becoming a broader, stronger business, a new Morrisons is taking shape, built by our colleagues on firm balance sheet foundations.”
Morrisons is a Top100 retailer in IRUK Top500 research.
