Grocery delivery firm Ocado is aiming to pull in just over £1 billion in cash through new investments and borrowing as it aims to capitalise on the fact that lots more people are ordering food deliveries via safe shopping online at the moment.

The Guardian reports that Ocado is one of the many retailers to have seen a healthy rise in orders because visits to bricks and mortar supermarkets are less appealing to many UK consumers due to the risks associated with the ongoing pandemic.

This state of affairs has spurred the company to take action and set out a spending plan that will make it better equipped to thrive in this brave new world in which online shopping is more popular and important than ever.

Company founder Tim Steiner said that the online grocery market was at a major turning point, with the unprecedented challenges presented by COVID-19 allowing it to take the next step and become more widely adopted.

Ocado is an important part of the UK’s grocery delivery market and works with chains such as M&S and Morrisons. It also has partnerships in other parts of the world, including America.

There are conflicting figures relating to just how much of the UK’s grocery market is made up of online sales, with data from the Office for National Statistics being a little more conservative than some statistics published elsewhere. Whichever way you look at it, it seems like this segment now enjoys a double-digit stake in the overall market.

Experts also believe that the coronavirus crisis will have changed consumer habits for good, meaning that even as restrictions are lifted and the threat is reduced, people will stick to the shopping choices that they have made during the lockdown.