Amazon mulls Aussie distribution centre

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in brief According to a report in the Sydney Morning Herald, giant international Internet retailer and cloud computing giant Amazon is considering deploying a distribution centre — Amazon-speak for giant warehouse filled with goods to ship to customers — in Australia. The newspaper reports (click here for the full article):

“It is understood representatives of the global giant are preparing to visit in coming months to tour prospective sites down the eastern seaboard with the potential to lease an existing property, or sign up as a pre-committed tenant for a greenfields property.”

The move comes as The Australian newspaper has recently reported in July last year that the company was planning to set up an Australian datacentre. Amazon has since advertised for Australian staff for a local facility, and has also ramped up the number of staff it has in Australia to meet customer demands, although the company has as of yet announced any datacentre facilities locally.

Hosting an Australia-based distribution centre would mean Amazon would be able to ship some products to Australian customers faster, although the facility would not be able to house the same breadth of products as its giant US warehouses. It is likely products popular in Australia — such as Amazon’s Kindle e-reader — would be shipped from the facility locally, if it eventuates.

Image credit: Amazon

14 COMMENTS

  1. Oh my god, yes PLEASE! I’ve been waiting for them to do this for years. Would revolutionise retail in this country. (As long as they source their stock overseas, rather than buying from local distributors.)

    • For the last 2 1/2 years 95% of my book purchases have been Kindle ebooks via Amazon.com.

      I have a feeling we would pay more for books bought via Amazon.com.au as has happened with amazon.co.uk. ( Also bookdepository.com books are generally cheaper now than those from bookdepository.co.uk. Amazon bought bookdepository in July last year.)

      • We already pay more for ebooks on amazon.com. The Australian kindle store prices are often higher than the US one. The ‘Your Country or Region’ setting on the left menu shows what store you’re viewing.

  2. It’s great.. the only problems are:

    – It wont be quite as cheap as in the US
    – We will have to pay GST (+1 on cost)
    – As above it won’t have the same scale
    – I don’t see us getting free shipping deals or Amazon Prime (tho could be wrong)

    It will of course change the landscape regardless. It will be highly utilise and Australian eRetailers will be in line for a lot of buttpain except this time they wont be able to complain about the GST..

  3. I’m a little curious if we’ll see the same horror stories that have come from workers stuck in Amazon’s US distribution warehouses – moreso if that will even be possible under Australian workplace legislation.

  4. we will just end up with yet another local distributor raping our wallets and bank accounts.

  5. I don’t mind Amazon opening a warehouse in Australia, however I have moral concerns as to how – at least in the US – that industry is staffed.

    I’d encourage anyone to have an objective read of this 1st hand investigation into the warehouse industry published last month on Mother Jones – which as I write this comment, notice that Nich has already referenced above.

    While I’d hope Australian labour laws, safety regulations and union organisation would prevent the situations described in that article happening on our shores – we need to be vigilant and aware of these issues, and be asking ourselves what’s the real cost of that bargain item we purchased online.

    Yeah, sorry to go all highbrow here – but we all need to be putting people before profits (or savings to our wallets).

  6. Mmm – Amazon local. And yes, I’ve read that Mother Jones article (I’m a subscriber) and don’t think it could happen in Australia. We have much stronger IR laws.

    At least with a local Amazon I’ll stop seeing how much either they or my bank are directly ripping me off with the exchange rate.

    • With the way WHS laws have change and are changing in this country it wouldn’t take long for a company exec to be facing jail time if those condition followed.

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