Amazon isn’t resting on its laurels when it comes to shipping goods and has now started shipping products to warehouses in the U.S. from Chinese merchants via the ocean. The move on the part of Amazon takes a job away from global freight transportation companies that did all the ocean shipping for retailers around the globe.
According to a report, the move is the most recent step in Amazon’s push to enhance its delivery business. While it doesn’t own or operate the ships transporting the goods, it is acting as a forwarder of global freight and a third-party logistics company. Ocean Audit, a company that focuses on ocean freight refund recovery for shipping customers, told The Wall Street Journal that Amazon has shipped via ocean more than 150 containers from China since the start of October. In January, the eCommerce giant began disclosing rates for sorting, labeling and trucking shipments on its website. Those tasks are typically handled by a global freight company. The service and rates were listed under Beijing Century Joyo Courier Service Co., a unit of Amazon in China.
“Amazon has integrated all those services into one basket,” said Steve Ferreira, chief executive of Ocean Audit, in the report. He noted that, for Amazon, creating this type of shipping service will give it “a lot of strategic value.”
The report noted that, in the past, Amazon registered the company with the federal agency that oversees transportation of products via ocean, which is a step toward enabling it to act as a middleman for merchants shipping products into and out of the U.S. The moves put Amazon in competition with the likes of FedEx and UPS and brings it closer to its vision to act as a delivery company for its own products and others around the globe.
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