Ocado has launched a new, one-hour delivery service called Zoom which will be trialled in West London.

Ocado Zoom will be trialled from March, and will offer “small batch delivery” on less than 10,000 SKUs within one hour.

The online grocer, which reported a full-year loss of £44.4m today, said Zoom will be “competitively priced” but has not said whether or not there will be minimum delivery threshold.

Tim Steiner, Ocado chief executive, said Zoom had been developed to address customer demand and had not been driven by the growing threat of Amazon.

Steiner said: “We’re always wary of them [Amazon], given their global scale, reach and size, but they’re not a big factor today in the UK grocery market. Even in terms of the online market, they’re still not a big factor. The competition in the market is really between ourselves and the big bricks-and-mortar retailers’ online operations.

“[The launch of Zoom] is not due to Amazon, because they haven’t made a big impact in the UK grocery space. Any move that we announce later will be to address potential customer demand.”

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