Ocado names Mark Richardson as CEO of new business unit

Grocery technology business Ocado revealed on Thursday that chief operating officer Mark Richardson had been tapped to take over as chief executive of a new business unit aimed at extending Ocado's product offering into new market sectors.

Ocado noted that it had expanded outside of its core grocery focus in 2020 with the acquisitions of Kindred Systems and Haddington Dynamics and with the upcoming launch of its Re:Imagined Ocado Smart Platform products, it will soon have a product range that will set "an unrivalled level of performance" both in price and throughput - not only in grocery but in automated storage and retrieval systems across "a wide range" of market sectors.

"Ocado Group will soon start a new business segment that combines these activities and over the next few years will revolutionise the whole ASRS and robotic handling sectors," said chief executive Tim Steiner.

"I am delighted to confirm that Mark Richardson will lead this new venture. Mark is a 20-year Ocado veteran and during this time has been responsible for teams spanning technology, platform implementation, and logistics. He also has extensive experience of working directly with the Materials Handling Equipment sector."

The FTSE 100-listed group highlighted that the new venture would be self-financing and will not require any additional capital beyond what it had previously guided.

Reporting by Iain Gilbert at Sharecast.com