Ocado removes bottled water from its deliveries in a bid to make space for other products

Online supermarket Ocado has removed bottled water from its deliveries to make space for other products. 

The grocer said banning the heavy and bulky item from home deliveries will allow them to deliver to up to 6,000 extra homes a week. 

The company said: ‘During the coronavirus pandemic, we’ve stopped selling bulky, heavy bottled water. This small step frees up extra space in our vans, and allows us to deliver to 6,000 extra homes a week.’ 

The move comes as retailers desperately try to adapt to feed the public – Sainsbury’s has now banned couples from visiting their stores in a bid to cut queues and improve social distancing. 

The supermarket giant says if more than one adult arrives at one of its stores, staff will ask the group to choose who goes inside to shop, with the others having to wait outside.

It follows similar moves introduced at rival chains Tesco, Aldi and Waitrose. 

However, parents with children who can’t be left home alone will still be allowed inside the building, bosses added.     

In a letter to customers, Sainsbury’s chief executive Mike Coupe wrote: ‘From today, we are asking everyone to please only send one adult per household to our shops.

‘This helps us keep people a safe distance apart and also helps to reduce queues to get into stores. 

‘Our store teams will be asking groups with more than one adult to choose one adult to shop and will ask other adults to wait. 

‘Children are of course welcome if they are not able to stay at home.’

The increase in panic-buying has lead to a surge in profits for supermarkets and Tesco is expected to post £1.8billion in profits as supermarket boss David Lewis prepares to step down after six years in charge.  

It is set to record pre-tax profits, for the year to February, up from £1.56billion last year. 

It will be the final full-year for Mr Lewis, 54, who has been credited with stabilising Tesco during his time at the helm.  

Shares in Tesco remain at similar levels to those achieved twelve months ago despite the recent financial uncertainty facing many businesses in the face of the coronavirus epidemic.   

Supermarket stocks, such as Tesco, have been broadly resilient as panic buying of essential items, such as pasta, flour and toilet roll, has helped to drive a surge in sales. 

Supermarkets dealt with record levels of demand in March with combined grocery sales rising by 20.6 per cent in the last four weeks, according to figures released by Kantar earlier this week. 

The survey also showed that Tesco sales were particularly strong and had jumped 5.5 per cent. 

Ocado said the demand they had experienced was like trying to serve everyone at Glastonbury Festival every hour of every day for two weeks. 

As a result it struggled to keep up with requests for home deliveries and had to stop taking new customers in early March, before suspending the website for two days to prepare for an onslaught of orders. 

The company delivered to 250,000 homes across the UK last week – prioritising vulnerable customers. 

The water bottles involved are both plastic and glass, so the move will dramatically reduce levels of plastic waste. 

For more than a decade the Daily Mail has campaigned to curb the use of unnecessary plastic. 

And in 2017 the paper launched its Turn The Tide On Plastic campaign and started a global conversation about how we’re flooding the world’s seas with waste. 

Ocado also said it had stopped selling flowers as they too took up too much space. To ensure the safety of staff and customers the supermarket has put in place additional health and hygiene measures. 

These include temperature checks of all staff at the start of every shift, increased supplies of personal hygiene products and stricter cleaning regimes across all sites.

Drivers have also stopped taking shopping into people’s homes and have paused collecting carrier bags for the time being. 

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