By Laura McGuire
Ocado, the upmarket digital grocery store, will close its oldest fulfilment centre in Hatfield placing 2,300 jobs at risk.
The supermarket, which operates as a joint venture with M&S, said that the centre was currently responsible for 20 per cent of Ocado’s 400k order per week, however it is ceasing operations at the site due to “network changes”.
Operations will now be moved to Ocado’s remaining sites across the UK, such as its new centre in Luton, which is set to open this summer.
Ocado, which posted a pre-tax loss of £501m in 2022, said that it will try to redeploy as many employees as possible to various sites across the UK.
Ocado shares down
Operations at the Hatfield site will close in line with the start of operations at the Luton site later this year.
“As the online grocery channel grows, our new, enhanced fulfilment centres and technologies will drive a step change in customer experience and efficiency,” Tim Steiner, chief of Ocado Group and chairman of Ocado Retail said.
He added: “With this capacity coming online, now is the right time for us to halt operations at our oldest facility at Hatfield and consider our future options for the site.
“Ocado.com customers will continue to enjoy the same outstanding standard of service throughout the region, which will further improve as the benefits of our new technologies are deployed across the network.”
Shares in the business (OCDO) were down 0.79 per cent this morning.
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