Marks & Spencer will be the latest food retailer to enter the market of safe shopping online with a delivery service fuelled by its recent acquisition of a 50 per cent share in Ocado, according to the Mirror.

Although supermarket chains like Tesco and Sainsbury’s have offered groceries online for over a decade, M&S has been reticent to make the leap. However, when it hinted that it was looking to invest in Ocado earlier this year, it became apparent that all this was likely to change.

While it is good to see more competition in the online grocery delivery marketplace, the only downside of this deal is that it will take a long time for M&S to organise its operations in conjunction with Ocado, meaning the first deliveries will not be made until late in 2020. This is partly due to the fact that Ocado is still contractually tied to Waitrose, meaning it will have to wait for this partnership to expire before joining forces with anyone else.

It was announced that more than 6500 different products from the M&S range will be included as part of Ocado’s online store starting next year. Company chief executive Steve Rowe described this move as transformational for the brand as well as offering better value and convenience to customers across the country.

Rowe also said that he had long been an advocate of the idea that M&S should offer groceries via the web, even if it took a long time to make this dream a reality.

There are a lot of challenges involved in launching a national grocery delivery service, which is why it makes sense for a company like M&S to work with an established retailer rather than going it alone and starting from scratch with its own infrastructure.