Amazon is shelling out more than $100 million to build its first fulfillment center in Turkey as it looks to accommodate the continued growth of e-commerce there, coupled with more small businesses selling on its platform.
The company’s Istanbul facility will employ 1,000 in its first year of operations and is expected to open in the fall.
A spokesperson for Amazon, reached Thursday, said the facility will serve mostly customers in Turkey.
“This investment is very important for our country’s ever-developing logistics infrastructure under the leadership of our President, and for our e-commerce sector, which has gained momentum in both supply and demand during the pandemic. This will also further strengthen our e-commerce sector both in the domestic market and in the global arena,” Ahmet Burak Dağlıoğlu, president of the Investment Office of the Presidency of the Republic of Turkey, said in a statement.
The e-commerce behemoth launched its online shop in Turkey in September 2018, with 15 product categories and more than 1,000 local sellers. The assortment expanded to 20 categories two years later, when the company launched its Amazon Prime membership program in Turkey.
Amazon said it’s currently looking to fill a number of positions in the country for the new warehouse, including engineers, human resources, IT, finance, health and safety and operations. The company said it will begin hiring for pickers, packers and shippers within the facility in the next few months and will partner with local companies on parcel carrier services.
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While the new facility addresses the growth of e-commerce demand in the country, it also will help accommodate a rising number of small businesses selling on Amazon.
The company said last year it spent more than $18 billion on sellers and introduced more than 250 tools to help them optimize their ability to sell on the site.
Small businesses, Amazon said, account for more than half of what’s purchased in its online shop and help generate roughly 60 percent of sales.
The property in Turkey, once opened, will join a much larger network that makes up the company’s Fulfillment by Amazon supply chain services that helps sellers get their products to the end consumer. Istanbul will be one of more than 200 fulfillment centers around the world operated by Amazon, totaling some 200 million square feet of warehousing space.
The company promises its sellers delivery as early as one day with deliveries every day of the week.
Fulfillment pricing in the U.S. begins at $3.99 a unit for pick, pack and ship service. An additional cost for storage within the company’s fulfillment centers begins at 83 cents per cubic foot.