Online grocery in Britain more than doubled during the COVID-19 pandemic, peaking at 16% of the overall food retail market.

But by December 2022 it had fallen back to 11.6%, according to market researcher Kantar, down 0.6 percentage points on the year.

"Had grocery globally stayed at the (pandemic) highs and grown from then, then the demand for our service might have been a multiple of what we would have historically expected," Ocado Group Chief Executive Tim Steiner told reporters.

"But the industry is still where people in 2018 would have forecast it to be in 2023 and growing and so I don't think there's any international slowdown," he said.

Technology partnership agreements with food retailers including Kroger in the United States, Casino in France, Aeon in Japan and Lotte in South Korea has driven Ocado Group's 6.7 billion pound ($8.2 billion) market capitalisation.

Steiner was speaking after Ocado Retail, the online supermarket joint venture between Ocado Group and Marks & Spencer, updated on trading in the run-up to Christmas.

($1 = 0.8193 pounds)

(Reporting by James Davey; editing by Sarah Young)