John Lewis Partnership said it would not be continuing its relationship with Today Development Partners (TDP), which was to explore opportunities around automated online fulfilment.

In May Waitrose & Partners said it had signed a deal with TDP to develop three new Customer Fulfilment Centres (CFCs) with “state-of-the-art technology”.

In its interim results John Lewis Partnership said: “We have recently decided not to continue with that relationship and will instead pursue our online ambitions utilising existing expertise across the partnership.

“We have plans to further strengthen our online capabilities this year with our new customer fulfilment centre in Enfield, as we build towards trebling the size of our online grocery operation to a £1bn business over the next three years.”