Amazon has expanded its free same-day delivery service for Prime members to more regions in the USA and Italy and reportedly plans to invest €1.2 million in its logistics warehouse in Leipzig, Germany.
In the USA, Amazon has expanded its same-day service to 11 new metropolitan areas including medium-sized cities like Charlotte, Cincinnati, Fresno, Louisville, Milwaukee, Nashville, Raleigh, Richmond, Sacramento, Stockton, and Tucson. With this addition, the service is now available in 27 metropolitan areas across the USA which covers more than 1,000 cities and towns.
Amazon Prime members who pay an annual fee of $99 can choose from over a million eligible items for Prime FREE Same-Day Delivery including popular electronics, toys and games, home repair tools, outdoor gear, vacation must-haves and much more. Orders placed in the morning are delivered by 9m in the evening on the same day while orders placed in the afternoon or evening arrive the next day.
“Prime was developed to make shopping on Amazon fast and convenient, and millions of members have used Prime FREE Same-Day Delivery to make their lives even easier,” Greg Greeley, Vice President of Prime, said. “We keep making Prime better, and as our operational capabilities grow, we will continue to invent and expand delivery options that customers love.”
In addition to same-day, Amazon also offers its ultra-fast delivery Prime Now in more than 25 metro regions, with tens of thousands of items being delivered for free in two hours or for $7.99 within one hour from a dedicated Prime Now app, available on iOS and Android devices.
Prime Now delivers from 8am to midnight, seven days a week. Prime members are notified via the app when the service is available in their area. The Prime membership in the USA includes unlimited free two-day shipping on more than 30 million items. The two-day shipping spans the continental USA from large cities to rural areas.
In Italy, Amazon has expanded the geographical coverage of Prime Now after launching the urgent delivery service in and around Milan last autumn. It now also offers Prime Now deliveries in 12 districts around the Italian economic metropolis. Since February customers have been able to order fresh goods through the service.
In Germany, the company plans to expand its logistics activities with an investment of €1.2 million in its logistics facility in Leipzig, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, to keep up with other, more modern logistics sites, the German news portal “Logistik Watchblog” reported. In addition to new conveyor technology, Amazon will also need more staff.
As part of the investment, Amazon will introduce the so-called “Zone Picking” system enabling several pickers to handle one order. Until now, one picker has been responsible for the whole order running through all the halls and corridors, which was extremely inefficient and time-consuming. With the new system, separate areas are allocated to individual pickers so several orders can be handled at the same time in future. The goal of Zone Picking for which Amazon has introduced a new shift system is to make the walking distances of pickers more efficient thus speeding up the handling of the orders.
