Amazon gets a foothold in shipping

The e-commerce giant was already delivering its customers by land or air,including using drones. It has now added a string to its bow with maritime transport. Through its Chinese subsidiary, Amazon was registered last November by the US Federal Maritime Commission (FMC) and can now act as a shipping agent between China and the US. This means that it can buy transport capacity (usually containers) which it can then sell to its customers under its own responsibility.

A discreet registration that has been updated by Flexport, a small logistics company in San Francisco, and which opens up new possibilities for the American e-commerce group. With this approval, Amazon can, for example, offer more advantageous transport conditions to Chinese producers who sell and export their products to the United States. It could even offer its services to other companies whose products are not necessarily distributed via the e-commerce site.

Controlling the entire supply chain But, more broadly, the means of controlling the supply chain between the seller and the end customer. This is not a new objective for Amazon, which is pursuing a strategy that should enable it to distance itself from traditional carriers such as Fedex, DHL or UPS, and which the American giant is building step by step.

Amazon has already made progress in several European countries: in 2014 the American group took advantage of the end of Royal Mail's postal monopoly in the United Kingdom to set up its own delivery network. A similar experiment has been in the test phase in Germany for several months. Not to mention the announcement last October of its wish to acquire, during the first quarter, the entire French delivery service Colis Privé

Not to mention that, according to the Seattle Times, Amazon would like to acquire its own fleet of Boeing 767 freighters in order to no longer depend on other carriers. According to the American newspaper, Amazon has contacted not only Boeing but also a number of operators specialising in freight transport such as Atlas Air, Kalitta Air and Air Transport Services Group.

The registration form of Amazon's Chinese subsidiary by the FMC. Amazon 3PL service