The launch this week of Amazon.co.uk's online grocery channel sees the world's largest online retailer pitch against the UK's leading supermarkets — Tesco, Sainsburys and Asda — and e-grocery store Ocado for a share of the growing online grocery shopping market.
The move uses the company's "unlimited virtual shelf space" to enable customers to choose from a wide variety of products, all of which benefit from free delivery.
The e-marketplace's fish and shellfish offerings hover at nearly 150 at Amazon.co.uk. Stocked in the website's virtual seafood shelf are diverse products that include canned tuna, hot and cold smoked salmon, scallops, whitefish, lemon sole fillets and peppered smoked mackerel.
Whitefish offerings include six frozen wild saithe fillet portions supplied by Donald Russell for GBP 24.00 or four (minimum weight of 720g) skinless and monkfish fillet portions for GBP 38.
The website also offers farmed Calvissius caviar from Italy. The 50g portion plus 16 blinis is priced at GBP 79.90.
Ready-prepared seafood specialties available for purchase include a GBP 4.80 pot of scallop and smoked bacon rillettes supplied by the La Paimpolaise brand. The brand's online rillettes range includes red mullet, salmon, cuttlefish, mackerel and oyster.
Although virtual grocery sales by UK customers are still small compared to actual store-visit purchases, the market is enjoying strident growth. UK retail industry body IGD estimates that while the market was worth GBP 2.6 billion three years ago it will reach GBP 7.2 billion by 2014.
