The popular shorthand for e-commerce – clicks and mortar – has again been proved relevant with recently announced plans for new Amazon logistics centres in Brazil to support growing demand for the e-commerce giant’s service.
Amazon has in fact announced that three more logistics centres in Brazil are now up and running. They are operating in the states of Minas Gerais and Rio Grande do Sul and the capital city of Brasilia.
As a recent Reuters report explains, these three new sites increase the number of Amazon logistics centres in Brazil to eight, adding an extraordinary 75,000 square metres of distribution space to the support network for the company’s e-commerce operation. This is apparently Amazon’s biggest expansion of distribution space since it began operating in Brazil in 2012 and will, according to Amazon, create 1,500 direct jobs.
This is a very big country, so delivery guarantees need to be logistically credible – and that’s what Alex Szapiro, Amazon’s chief executive in Brazil, has suggested will be a result of this expansion, noting that the new centres will allow the company to immediately raise the number of cities where Amazon Prime customers can receive deliveries within two business days to over 500 from 400.
Amazon Prime is a popular programme through which users pay a fee for guaranteed delivery times – and Brazil is apparently the country with the fastest growth in Amazon Prime subscriptions, according to Reuters.
This expansion has also been an indirect result of the ongoing pandemic and recent restrictions on movement, which have driven growing demand for online delivery services.
In fact the Reuters report notes that the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic on e-commerce in Brazil has been profound, with thousands of Brazilian businesses moving to e-commerce platforms, a trend that looks like continuing even as lockdown and social distancing measures are eased.