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Tuesday, January 22, 2019

Amazon pushing hard into ocean shipping, making it easier for Chinese goods to get to you

SAN FRANCISCO — Quietly and below the radar, Amazon has been ramping up its ocean shipping service, sending close to 4.7 million cartons of consumers goods from China to the United States over the past year, records show.

This marks a significant move into what many believe is the company’s overall strategy of eventually controlling much of its transportation network, from trucks to airplanes and now to ships.

As of the beginning of 2018, Amazon’s freight shipping arm has shipped over 5,300 shipping containers from China to the United States. Those containers mark Amazon’s push into the fragmented and convoluted ocean freight market, allowing it to offer companies manufacturing in China a soup-to-nuts service that eliminates almost all other middlemen on the way to the U.S. Consumer.

“This makes them the only e-commerce company that is able to do the whole transaction from end-to-end. Amazon now has a closed ecosystem,” said Steve Ferreira, CEO of Ocean Audit, a company that utilizes data and machine learning to find ocean freight refunds for the Fortune 500. His research first uncovered the increase, based on data from shipping databases, including Distribution Publications, Inc. And ImportGenius.com.

It's a major advantage for Amazon and its founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, say experts.

“Nobody else has even come close to approaching this. There is no Walmart ocean freight,” said Michael Zakkour, executive vice president for global digital commerce with Tompkins International, a supply chain consulting company.

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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

When will the country be renamed Amazonia?

Anonymous said...

It is scary to think that one individual can control America. Ae thethere no rules.

Anonymous said...

Oh, so they are skirting import tarrifs?

Anonymous said...

Something smells. This company has outsmarted Walmart! There is definitely something wrong. Need an investigation.

Anonymous said...

"No WalMart ocean freight"???? WalMart is the biggest importer of goods from China...in the world! How in the world can someone make an absurd statement like that? How do they think all those Chinese WalMart goods get to the USA and into the stores? They sure don't fly them here.