LONDON, UK: Ocado Group and Groupe Casino today announce the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (“MOU”) to extend their partnership.
This extension will see the creation of a new exclusive Joint Venture (“JV”) to support the development and management of single or multi-tenanted CFCs in France.
Underpinned by the success of their partnership and expanding operations in Ile-de-France, Ocado and Groupe Casino believe there is significant and growing demand for online grocery services across the French market, creating a huge opportunity to leverage their combined expertise, including Ocado’s UK experience providing multi-retailer CFCs.
The Joint Venture will draw on the combined strengths of Ocado and Groupe Casino to provide logistics services for future CFCs. These services include project management for CFC construction and set-up, as well as the recruitment and operations management of personnel.
Alongside the JV, Ocado Solutions will offer its world-leading automated fulfilment and software solutions to all grocery retailers in the French market, with OSP capacity in the future CFCs available to multiple grocery retailers, including Groupe Casino itself. Future CFCs will also benefit from the latest range of innovations announced by Ocado.
Once finalised, the JV is not expected to impact the current live operations of the partnership between Ocado and Groupe Casino.
Alongside the creation of the new JV, Groupe Casino will shortly expand its deployment of Ocado’s solutions to include the use of Ocado’s In-Store Fulfilment software across the Monoprix store estate.
Additionally, Ocado will integrate Octopia, the world-class marketplace platform launched by Cdiscount into the Ocado Smart Platform, bringing new flexibility and functionality to its global partners. The agreement between Ocado and Cdiscount also provides a preferential option for Ocado to buy Octopia shares in the event of future fundraising. This commercial partnership will support the development of Octopia and Cdiscount’s strategy of expanding its B2B businesses.
There is not expected to be any initial capital cost associated with the JV to either Ocado Group or Groupe Casino. CFC-related capital costs typically associated with OSP partners will be funded in future CFCs by tenant grocery retailers in line with their capacity commitments.
Tim Steiner, CEO of Ocado Group, said: “The online grocery channel in France has reached an inflection point, with a huge rise in demand for compelling, affordable and efficient grocery ecommerce propositions. Our growing partnership and live operations in Ile-de-France have set the highest bar for the experience French consumers can expect in online grocery.”
“This announcement marks a deepening of the relationship between Groupe Casino and Ocado Group, and it will further support the capital light expansion of our partnership into other French regions. For the first time, it will also open up the whole of the French grocery market to Ocado’s solutions.”
“Additionally, by integrating the Octopia marketplace into our end-to-end smart platform, we are bringing more proven, market-leading flexibility to our partners’ online ecosystems.”
Jean-Charles Naouri, Groupe Casino, said: “Casino Group is pleased to announce this new agreement with Ocado Group. This partnership illustrates our ability to once again revolutionize the way of disrupting the online grocery market.
After having experienced the success of the Ocado solution with Monoprix Plus, Casino Plus and Naturalia Marché Bio, the French consumers will be able to benefit from new, even more efficient e-commerce services, making their daily needs even easier.
Casino Group is very proud that Ocado chooses Octopia for its marketplace solution recognizing its word-class functionality.”