Amazon is boosting its logistics and delivery operations in Spain with a large-scale rollout of parcel collection lockers and crowdsourced Flex deliveries after dramatic double-digit sales growth on Black Friday in both Spain and Italy.
The e-commerce giant announced that it sold 1.4 million items in Spain last Friday (November 24), nearly a 50% rise on last year’s 940,000 orders. In Italy, Amazon’s Black Friday sales soared by more than 80% to 2 million orders from 1.1 million last year despite industrial action at its main logistics centre at Piacenza.
In parallel, the company announced yesterday the launch of Amazon Lockers at more than 120 points in 30 Spanish cities, including Madrid (35), Barcelona (15), Valencia (13), Alicante, Seville and Malaga.
Amazon Spain has signed partnerships with several different kinds of retailers to offer customers a wide range of convenient collection points. These include Repsol gas stations, Telepizza restaurants, DIA supermarkets, OhMyBox storage rooms and Merlin and Unibail shopping centers.
Amazon Lockers are already available at 70 stations in the Repsol network, across 21 provinces, making the company a strategic partner for Amazon Spain in its locker service. Both companies anticipate a gradual increase in these numbers before the end of the year and in 2018.
“Amazon Lockers allows customers to send Amazon orders to the collection point they choose in different locations in these cities in an easy and secure way. Some of these Lockers are available to customers 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” the company said.
After buying at Amazon.es, customers can select an Amazon Locker, where they can pick up their package at the most appropriate time for them. As soon as the package arrives at the Locker, the customer receives an email notification with a unique code, as well as the address and opening hours of the Locker that he has selected. In the Locker, customers can enter their code manually or scan the barcode. Customers have 3 days to collect their packages, before they are returned to Amazon.
"Our customers in 30 Spanish cities can now use Amazon Lockers. We are happy that they can choose where and when to pick up their orders,” said François Nuyts, Vice President and General Manager of Amazon.es and Amazon.it. “We are investing significantly in Spain to continually improve our customers’ buying experience. We are proud to offer Amazon Lockers as an option and to associate ourselves with companies with companies such as Repsol, Telepizza, Unibail or DIA, that can offer their customers a new service. "
María Victoria Zingoni, Repsol’s Executive Managing Director of Downstream, commented: “This alliance with Amazon reinforces our commitment to the customer, and allows us to provide them with a new service that adds to the ever-expanding offering at our points of sale. The broad network of Repsol service stations, made up of 3,500 locations across Spain, gives us close contact with consumers”.
Meanwhile, Amazon is also planning to launch Flex, its crowdsourced delivery service, in Spain following similar launches in the USA, the UK and Germany.
The company has activated a website under ‘http://www.repartidorautonomo.com/’ seeking people to work two-hour shifts for €28 (i.e. €14 per hour), initially in Madrid. Amazon Flex ‘independent contractors’ would use their own private vehicles to collect orders from the company’s logistics centre and deliver them to customers.
“We are proud to present Amazon Flex in Spain,” the company said on the website. “A project already launched in the United States and the United Kingdom, which offers the possibility of obtaining additional income by collaborating in Amazon Flex parcel delivery. This service will help to improve the pace of delivery of our packages, and is already popular among thousands of delivery partners in the countries where it operates.”
The offer could be particularly attractive to young adults already working part-time for other delivery companies, such as food delivery firms, according to experts.
Amazon is investing heavily in its Spanish logistics network. It currently has two main fulfilment centres in Spain: a 77,000 sqm facility serving Madrid (San Fernando de Henares) and a site in Barcelona (Castellbisbal), which is dedicated to Amazon Pantry. But three new facilities will be fully operational by the end of this year at El Prat and Martorelles (Barcelona) and Getafe (Madrid), and another fulfilment centre will open in Illescas (Toledo) in the fall of 2018.
In addition, Amazon has two urban logistics centers in Madrid and Barcelona to provide ultra-fast Prime Now deliveries to customers in two cities. The company recently announced the opening of similar logistics stations in Getafe (Madrid), Paterna (Valencia), Seville and Alcobendas (Madrid) to strengthen its distribution network.
