Ocado CEO Tim Steiner conceded “we are not blameless” in the move by major North American supermarket partners to close their robotic warehouses in recent months.
In January, Canadian supermarket Sobeys announced it was to close its Ocado-powered CFC in Calgary, blaming growth in demand for online grocery in the region being slower than anticipated. In November, Kroger confirmed it would shutter three of its Ocado tech-powered CFCs, as it prioritised a store-pick model.
In Ocado’s full-year results presentation this morning, Steiner said “we have learnt important lessons” as the company prepares to re-enter international markets as exclusivity agreements come to an end.
Among them, convincing partners to initially launch smaller fulfillment sites, and ensure there is sufficient demand in a location before launching a large-scale site there.
“Some partners have had the view of ‘we bought this amazing stuff and if we just turn it on, we’ll have a successful business’,” Steiner said.
“And obviously we’ve been saying for a while that’s not the case, but…even where we realise it, some of our partners have still behaved a bit like that,” he added.
The company’s results revealed it had exceeded market expectations to grow adjusted EBITDA 59.4% to £178m.
Revenues jumped 12.1% to reach £1.2bn in the year to 30 November, and Ocado managed to slash its pre-adjustment operating loss from £48.5m to £27.5m despite a £48.1m jump in finance costs.
The company’s strong performance in 2025 came thanks in part to a 26% jump in volumes through its international sites.
As part of its long-standing struggle towards profitability, and ambition to hit positive cashflow in FY2026, the company confirmed “a significant number” of jobs would be lost as the group shifted to a “lower structural cost base”.
It is understood the move will lead to 1,000 jobs being lost – or 5% of the company’s 20,000-strong workforce – with the UK to take the brunt of the pain as the axe falls on the Hatfield headquarters in Hertfordshire.
Under the restructure, Ocado will fold its commercial brands Ocado Solutions and Ocado Intelligent Automation into a single entity, and cut back on R&D. The group will also consolidate sales teams for its grocery e-commerce and supply chain solutions under new chief revenue officer Nick de la Vega.
De la Vega would better be able to “influence [partners] to create the behaviour that means we’re both successful” Steiner said.
As the company enters what it is calling a “new commercial phase” it is working to better serve the needs of retailers, Steiner said, be they opting to manually pick in stores or dark stores, or stand up automated micro-fulfilment sites instead of large CFCs.
“The critical lesson that we’ve learned is that you do not buy a large scale CFC unless you have a business to put through it,” he said.
The company has introduced a solution in recent months for stores to quickly pick orders received via aggregator apps – which has allowed Morrisons to increase its aggregator delivery coverage to 100 new areas of the UK – and is working on “external ports” from which gig couriers can collect multiple robot-picked orders at a site, for rapid delivery to customer homes.
“With exclusivity arrangements concluded in most markets, we have greater flexibility to pursue new partnerships and growth opportunities,” Steiner said.
“We are well set to re-enter multiple markets with an evolved technology platform, designed to be more flexible, offering a wider range of solutions to help retailers to run more efficiently and deliver a better service for shoppers, in any market environment, at any stage in their online journey,” he added.
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