Recent lay-offs in logistics could well be 'a harbinger of headwinds'
Last month saw a spate of layoffs in the logistics arena: in the space of ...
© Frédéric Legrand |
By Stuart Todd
Maersk is poised to carry out fulfilment services for Amazon from a large warehouse in northern France, according to a recent French media report quoting a senior executive at the US etailer.
A spokesperson for Maersk told The Loadstar the company would be occupying 75% of a 100,000sq metre warehouse on a business park inDenain, but would not confirm Amazon was the customer.
The spokesperson said Maersk planned to employ 430 workers at the site during the peak season (September-December) and 240 during off-peak periods.
Asked why the company had outsourced fulfilment services to Maersk and not kept them in-house, a spokesperson for Amazon said: “Like other companies in the logistics sector, Amazon regularly works with third-party companies to complement its own sites.”
One example is a site near Douai, also in northern France, where ID Logistics opened a 70,000sq metre warehouse for Amazon in 2021, employing 500 staff.
It is not known whether Maersk providing fulfilment for Amazon is a first. A well-placed source told The Loadstar that, in addition to a 2023-2024 agreement between the two for the transport of 20,000 FFE containers using green biofuel through Maersk’s ECO Delivery ocean product offering, “it is very likely that [Maersk] is doing more for [Amazon] along the supply chain.”
Maersk itself made a concerted move into the B2C ecommerce and fulfilment space in 2021, with two acquisitions in the US and Europe – part of an ambitious business strategy to develop an ‘end-to-end’ logistics offering encompassing ocean and air freight , forwarding and contract logistics to support customers’ supply chains.
It spent more than $900m buying US firm Visible Supply Chain Management for $838m and netherlands-based B2C Europe Holding for $86m.
At the time of the purchase, Visible SCM was handling 200,000 orders a day and enabling 200m parcels a year through its proprietary technology solutions, while B2C Europe’s offering consisted of labelling services, pick-ups, sorting parcels, linehaul and injection into the last-mile delivery network of 100+ carriers, including full returns logistics, in 35 European countries.
2021 also saw Maersk acquire HUUB, a Portuguese cloud-based logistics start-up specialising in technology solutions for B2C warehousing for the fashion industry, as well as LF Logistics, a Hong Kong-based contract logistics firm with capabilities within omnichannel fulfilment services, e-commerce and inland transport in the Asia-Pacific region.
Yesterday, The Loadstar reported how Amazon was now offering its sellers a fully managed end-to-end logistics service through Supply Chain by Amazon.
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