Ocado could tap investors for more cash in the hunt for further international deals, says The Daily Telegraph following yesterday’s first-quarter trading statement. “Beast from the East hits Ocado as online grocer makes fewer deliveries but it still manages a sales rise overall,” reports The Daily Mail. The Guardian says three small delivery depots in Bristol, Oxford and Kent, were cut off by snow and the company said it had decided to take fewer orders because tricky driving conditions hampered its vans.

Tempus in The Times (£) says you have to hand it to Ocado’s management for sticking to its guns. Since the online grocer was founded nearly two decades ago, Ocado’s executives have had to spend almost as much time trying to convince naysayers about the wisdom of the company’s business model as they have actually running the business. It says all eyes will be on how the retail business and the solutions arm develop in time. The real prize is overseas, the column says, because grocery is the largest retail market in the world, and Ocado could be set for a bright future if it can gain a dominant position.

The Independent notes Ocado has enjoyed strong share-price performance over the past year, more than doubling in value since March 2017.

Theo Spierings, chief executive of Fonterra, the world’s biggest dairy exporter will step down by the end of the year, following criticism of governance at the business by some of its 10,500 shareholders, who have become increasingly worried about the poor performance of Shenzhen-listed infant formula maker Beingmate, reports the Financial Times (£).

Staying with China, ZhongAn Online Property & Casualty Insurance, is looking to shake up the country’s chicken supply chain using blockchain technology, says the Financial Times (£). Customers can download an application enabling them to track a chicken’s route to the supermarket, and provides access to the bird’s life history along with charts showing its level of activity.

Elsewhere, Amazon eclipsed Alphabet as the world’s second largest public company by value last night as it gained ground on Apple in the race to be America’s first $1tn business (The Times £). Amazon gained 2.7% cent to $1,586.5 to reach a market capitalisation of $768bn.

The Bank of England should prepare markets for an interest rate rise in May with its policy announcement tomorrow, says The Times’ (£) shadow monetary policy committee.

The consumer price index, the UK’s headline measure of inflation, fell to 2.7%, down from 3% in December and January, and the lowest rate since July 2017 The Times (£). The Independent notes food and non-alcoholic beverage prices climbed 0.1% between January and February compared with 0.8% a year ago. Sky News says the fall in inflation raises hopes there has been a “turning point” in Britain’s Brexit-linked cost-of-living squeeze.

The pressure on plastic continues with a warning from the Foresight Future of the Sea Report for the UK government that plastic litter in the oceans will treble between 2015 and 2025. It also stresses that the ocean is under assault from many different types of pollution - including run-off pesticides and fertilisers from farms, industrial toxins like PCBs, and pharmaceuticals. The authors say if governments can identify ways of protecting biodiversity in the seas, there are riches to be harvested BBC.

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