German supermarket chain Lidl is taking on Amazon’s new Pantry service with a similar delivery service while Amazon has now launched its own deliveries in the metropolitan area of Munich.
Similar to Amazon Pantry, which was launched earlier this month across Germany, Lidl customers can now purchase everyday groceries from Lidl’s website and get them delivered by DHL in one single ‘provisions’ box to their doorstep or to a DHL Packstation.
While Amazon’s Pantry Box is available for €4.99 per delivery and only for Amazon Prime members who have to pay €49 per year, Lidl offers customers free delivery of the box until the end of next month (30 November) in combination with a gift coupon code they need to enter when ordering the box. The code is valid only for products from the groceries & chemist category and no minimum order value is required, with no further obligation or annual fees on the customers’ part.
This gives the major German grocery discounter a competitive advantage on Amazon and saves costs for customers on its box which is delivered within 2-3 days across Germany, as it is also the case with the Pantry Box.
Amazon launched the Pantry Box in the USA in April 2014 and extended it to Germany and Austria at the beginning of October. While fresh food is not included in the new service, in contrast to ‘Amazon Fresh’, which is available in selected areas of the USA, it covers a wide range of products that consumers usually purchase at a supermarket.
Meanwhile, the US e-commerce giant last week started delivering parcels itself around Munich instead of using parcel operators like DHL, Hermes etc., as it was the case before. Bernd Schwenger, Managing Director of Amazon Germany Transport, confirmed to the German transport magazine Verkehrsrundschau the rumours around its own parcel delivery service that have been going on for some time now.
For the shipping service, the company has rented a 6,000 sqm hall in the industrial area of Geiselbullach (Olching) in the district of Fürstenfeldbruck, part of the metropolitan Munich area. The industrial park is located at the A8 and A99 motorways where goods will be delivered on a daily basis from the Amazon logistics centre in Graben/Augsburg to be then distributed daily by around 200 drivers to the customers’ doorstep.
However, Amazon doesn’t plan its own delivery fleet for the moment, Schwenger stressed. Instead, it works together with six local and regional delivery operators including Interkep, Liefery, Rico Logistics, Systemlogistik, Krae Transport und AZ Logistik.
“We want to work as a regular parcel operator now offering the next-day and same-day delivery services that DHL and Hermes have been offering to us,” he told Verkehrsrundschau. The Amazon Fresh and Prime Now services will not be provided from Olching in the initial stage, though.
Apparently, Amazon is even planning a second distribution centre covering 7,000 sqm in the eastern part of Munich at the A94 motorway to become operational in summer 2016. The company is also eyeing other big cities in Germany such as Hamburg and Berlin for further distribution centres.
“We are waiting for the results in Olching. Then we will see if more distribution centres will be built based on the model of Olching in other German cities,” Schwenger commented.
Amazon’s ambitions could be a potential threat for established parcel operators in Germany as 500-700 million parcels out of around 3 billion parcels shipped on the German parcels market annually come from Amazon alone. The carriers would thus lose one of their most important customers and have to deal with revenue losses.
