Aldi plays online catch-up

When lockdown began, our family, like millions of others, were excluded from home deliveries even though the household has a vulnerable member.

Ocado was impossible, Tesco could offer us no slots and Fresh, the food arm of Amazon-owned Whole Foods, claimed to have delivery times immediately available but it proved a false claim unless you were willing to buy weeks in advance.

On the recommendation of a friend we settled on a new player Osolocal2u, a supplier to the catering trade, trying its hand at retail. It has been a fascinating journey. When garlic was ordered we ended up with a large carton of cleanly cut pieces, enough to feed the 4,000. Sweet potatoes arrived in abundance as did the world’s largest celeriac.

As the weeks passed, our supplier has become nimbler. The list of products has become longer and more user friendly, and there is free delivery for orders over £50.

That is a significant figure because it was the number which discouraged Marks & Spencer from home food deliveries on the grounds that as a ‘top-up’ food store for most customers it couldn’t be made to pay. M&S’s £700m deal with Ocado will miss the first peak of lockdown but the alliance, due to go on stream in the autumn, should benefit from changing shopping habits.

Much of the innovation among Britain’s grocers in recent times has been driven by the German no-frills discounters Aldi and Lidl, which have grabbed a 13.9pc share of the UK market defying the predictions of former Sainsbury’s chief executive Justin King, who saw them as a temporary threat.

What is encouraging in present circumstances is that Aldi is playing catch-up. It is to trial home supply with Deliveroo, offering rapid services from its nottingham store with 150 initial products.

It might have the Deliveroo logistics but it won’t have the Ocado robotics which have made the online grocery a tech champion worth £13.7bn – more than M&S, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons together.

Maybe the UK does have something to teach our former eU partners in Germany.

Falling Son

JApAn may be the first of the G7 advanced economies into recession, but it is stretching the facts to blame it all on the dreaded virus. The country’s fall into the pit of despondency began in the final quarter of last year when expanding output was smashed by a rise in consumption taxes.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak should note that before he adopts the tax hike remedies being pushed by Treasury mandarins for dealing with the post-Covid-19 deficit.

The first quarter of 2020, when the Japanese economy shrunk by 3.4pc on an annualised basis, provides a better picture of where the coronavirus damage is being done. Japan is an export powerhouse and shipments overseas, notably to the US, plummeted to the lowest level in four years. The pattern followed the disease, with Chinese exports first affected followed by those to the US and europe.

Toyota, the world’s biggest car maker, plans to cut car production by 122,000 units next month and is forecasting an 80pc drop in full year profit. prime Minister Abe’s plans to head off the worst of the slump with a £917bn fiscal package is already being seen as inadequate, with the current quarter forecast to produce a further 22pc drop in output. A second package of government spending already is advocated.

Japan’s champion tech investor Softbank, owner of Cambridge smart-chip maker Arm holdings, is also wobbling. Boss Masayoshi Son has revealed a £10.6bn loss for 2019 largely caused by the governance and financial implosion at property sharing group WeWork. Son is preparing investors for the worst predicting that Covid-19 could reap damage as harsh as the Great Depression.

preparing for the worst he is planning hefty disposals including a chunk of its 25pc share in Alibaba and a £25bn US stake in mobile operator T-Mobile with majority owner Deutsche Telekom the likely buyer.

So the game is not over quite yet.

GSK winner

AnOTheR life sciences breakthrough has been notched up for UK big pharma with the disclosure by GlaxosmithKline that its prevention treatment for hIV, Cabotegravir, has leapt ahead of rival Gilead’s Truvada. Instead of a daily pill, the compound from GSK’s ViiV healthcare offers a course of six injections a year and could be a life changer for potential AIDS sufferers. GSK shares advanced 2.4pc. Inspiring.