Growth
The UK retail market experienced significant change over the year. We continue to see an increase in the number of customers choosing to shop online for their groceries, which was reflected in an increase in our active customers of over 453,000. However, the grocery market has become increasingly competitive, with margins being placed under pressure from price discounting by grocery retailers. Despite these difficulties, Ocado is one of the small group of grocery retailers that continues to grow, with Group gross sales increasing by 20.4% and EBITDA increasing by 56.3%.
Customers and suppliers
It was a strong year for our non-food offering, with the launch of Sizzle, our new kitchenware store, and the continued success of our pet store, Fetch, with product ranges of over 12,000 and 8,000 products respectively. In addition, we are continuing to ensure a greater choice for our Ocado.com customers through an increase in our product range to over 43,000 products, including an increase in Ocado own-label products. We are also providing more opportunities for our suppliers, and hosted the "Britain's Next Top Supplier" competition, to help support upcoming, small suppliers.
Efficiency
During the year, our efficiency has continued to improve, notably in Dordon, where the milestone of 100,000 deliveries per week was achieved, and after year end, the further milestone of 200,000 Ocado.com deliveries per week across both CFCs. We also started building work on a new CFC in Andover, Hampshire and have announced that we exchanged contracts on a site in Erith in the London Borough of Bexley for CFC4. We intend to install our next generation infrastructure solution in these new CFCs, which we expect to be cheaper and more efficient to run than our current CFCs.