Amazon ramping up European presence
Amazon has announced that it created 10,000 new jobs at the company across Europe in 2015 and that it plans to create “several thousand more new jobs” in Europe in 2016. In a statement issued by its UK arm today (22 January), Amazon reported that it currently employs over 40,000 people across Europe and “the 10,000 new permanent roles added in 2015 is the most Amazon has created in a single year in Europe and a 50% increase over 2014”.
Furthermore, Amazon said that in 2016, it will be “investing to expand its European Fulfilment Network, increase EU-based research and development, and build new infrastructure to support its growing cloud-computing business, among other initiatives”.
As Post&Parcel readers will be aware, there have been reports of Amazon ramping up its distribution and logistics capabilities in a number of key European markets recently – and today’s statement seems to confirm that the online giant is gearing up for expansion.
Xavier Garambois, Vice President, Amazon EU Retail, commented: “We are seeing stronger demand than ever from our customers all across Europe, and we see lots more opportunity across Amazon’s businesses to invent and invest for the future. We created over 10,000 new jobs in 2015 and plan to create several thousand more in 2016 at all education, experience and skill levels, from speech and linguistic scientists to digital media experts to fulfilment centre and customer service associates.”
Amazon has invested over €15bn since 2010 on infrastructure and operations in Europe and now has a pan-EU network of more than 80 corporate offices, fulfilment centres, seller and customer service centres, R&D centres, and Amazon Web Services (AWS) datacenter regions.
