Online retailer and cloud computing provider Amazon is planning on making available thousands of new jobs in Europe this year, the company representatives said earlier today. Over 2,500 of those jobs will be in Britain, and these new openings are the beginning of the company’s plans to increase its presence in the region. Specifically, Amazon is looking to expand its delivery and warehouse network and increase the capabilities of its research and development operations in the Old Continent. Another goal is building necessary European infrastructure to support the growing demands of its cloud-computing business which is offering unlimited photo storage to members of Amazon Prime premium shipping service as of two months ago. As we all know, there are a lot of those. Vice president of Amazon EU retail described this decision as an investment for the future incited by the fact that the European demand for their services is “stronger than ever”.
Amazon claims it has created over 10.000 permanent European jobs in 2015 alone, which would put its collective workforce on the continent at over 40.000. The company has already invested around $16.3 billion in its infrastructure and operations in Europe in the last six years, more than third of which ended up in the UK. Consequently, a fight for the market started between the online retailer and large British supermarket chains in November after Amazon launched a packaged groceries service for Prime members. It is believed that this resulted in the bid of the Britain’s second-largest supermarket company Sainsbury’s to purchase Home Retail, one of the leading home and general merchandise retailers in the country. The initial bid was rejected, but the story looks far from over as the two are rumored to still be in negotiations.
In any case, Amazon seems to be making some huge waves in the UK with its ongoing expansion which has been underway in full force since 2010. This latest expansion will take its British workforce to 14.500, and it remains to be seen how will competition in the country and the rest of Europe respond to the growing list and range of services that are surely coming as a result of these latest developments. Regardless of that, more healthy competition should mean that the only clear winners in all of this will be the consumers.