July 25 news: Amazon recently announced that it will officially launch Amazon Warehousing and Distribution (AWD) service in Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom starting August 20. This marks AWD's first entry into the European market, signaling Amazon's expansion of its warehousing and replenishment system—which has been operating in the United States for several years—to the five core European sites.

Image source: Amazon Global Selling official account

The AWD warehouses are located in South Yorkshire, UK, and North Rhine, Germany, covering the UK site and four major EU sites. According to Amazon's official introduction, AWD offers long-term bulk warehousing, automatic replenishment, fixed storage rates, one-stop supply chain management, and more.

Sellers can store eligible inventory through AWD without being affected by FBA storage capacity limits. Once goods enter the AWD warehouse, products become searchable and purchasable by consumers, effectively reducing the out-of-stock rate by 15%.

At the same time, AWD uses fixed storage rates with no long-term storage duration requirements and no peak-season price hikes. Sellers can also combine AWD with other eligible Amazon logistics services to enjoy discounts on certain storage and transportation fees, and manage long-term warehousing and FBA fulfillment through a unified system.

In addition, the AWD system leverages machine learning and data models to automatically forecast demand for different SKUs during off-peak and peak seasons, and helps merchants automatically distribute and transfer inventory to the appropriate FBA fulfillment centers. For EU sellers, sending inventory to Germany enables pan-European distribution with improved fulfillment efficiency: the proportion of orders shipped from a warehouse close to the buyer increases by an average of 19%, and same-day or next-day fast delivery orders rise by an average of 9.7%. Merchants can also choose automatic or manual replenishment mode for each SKU based on sales and stocking plans.

AWD was first tested in the United States in 2022, opened to more US sellers in 2023, and later integrated with supply chain services such as Amazon Global Logistics and Amazon Freight.

With the entry of AWD into Europe, Amazon has further improved its supply chain service system. Previously, sellers typically relied on third-party overseas warehouses for long-term storage and replenishment to FBA. After the launch of AWD, both inventory management and replenishment can be completed directly within Amazon's system.

Source: E-commerce Pai