Morrisons grows Amazon deal

Morrisons is bringing its same-day home delivery tieup with Amazon to Scotland, rolling the service out to a host of cities including Glasgow before the end of the year.

It allows shoppers to order the supermarket’s products online, which are then picked up at a local store and delivered by Amazon later that day.

In some locations, customers are able to receive deliveries in as little as one hour of the order being placed.

The service, currently available to Amazon Prime Now customers in Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham, and parts of London and the home counties, will be extended to cities including Newcastle, Liverpool, Sheffield and Portsmouth as well as Glasgow.

The group intends to expand coverage even further across the UK at a later date.

The grocer is also becoming a retailer with Amazon’s Prime website and app, and will begin selling directly to customers through its “Morrisons at Amazon” offering.

It will continue to operate as a wholesaler for all of Amazon’s other UK grocery offers for customers.

David Potts, chief executive at Morrisons, said: “Morrisons’ conveniently located local supermarkets and Amazon’s very popular website and customer offer are an ideal combination, offering ultrafast same-day grocery home delivery for customers in and around cities across Britain.”

Neil Wilson, chief market analyst at Markets.com, said: “Alongside the burgeoning wholesale business, Morrisons can expect further earnings-accretive growth from the tie-up with Amazon.”

The news comes after Morrisons last month loosened its agreement with Ocado following a catastrophic fire at the online grocer’s Andover facility in February.

Under exclusivity terms in the previous Ocado agreement, the supermarket group had been prevented from expanding its Amazon venture further.