Marks and Spencer and Ocado’s online delivery partnership has gone live today.

The £750 million joint venture, signed last year in a move away from rival Waitrose, lets customers shop for 6,000 M&S grocery, fashion and homeware products on Ocado’s home delivery platform.

Ocado's contract with Waitrose had been in place since 2002. James Bailey, executive director at Waitrose, said the split presented a “big opportunity” to expand the grocery chain’s own online delivery platform, as shoppers switch to online following the Coronavirus lockdown.

This morning, Ocado announced that the first deliveries of M&S food were going out to customers to mark the start of a “transformational partnership” for both brands.

Ocado said dedicated teams had been working behind the scenes for months in preparation for the launch, developing new products, preparing supply chain processes and providing thousands of data fields and photos for the website.

M&S Food will provide 6,000 products and 800 M&S clothing and home lines, in addition to 750 new M&S products, which will be available on Ocado.com - in addition to Ocado Retail’s range of over 50,000 products.

Melanie Smith, chief executive of Ocado Retail, said: “This marks the culmination of over a year of hard work by everyone involved and I am so proud of everyone at Ocado Retail and our friends at M&S for such a collaborative partnership."

Stuart Machin, managing director of M&S Food, added: “Taking our full food range online for the first time is transformative for M&S food and brings to life our strategy to protect the magic, the delicious, quality food and trusted sourcing standards customers love – whilst modernising the rest.”

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