Amazon is making deliveries of groceries free to Prime members in 300 postcodes in London and the south -east as it ramps up the pressure on the £119 billion grocery market.
Customers subscribing to Amazon Prime will be able to order groceries through Amazon Fresh with free delivery on orders over £40 from today.
Prime customers in more than 40 postcodes across the London and Surrey covering including areas such as Woking and Guildford, will be able to order same-day grocery delivery. Amazon said it plans to expand the service to more customers by the end of 2020.
AmazonFresh offers Amazon Prime members and members of their Amazon Household, same-day or next-day delivery for grocery orders with a minimum order value of £40 to eligible postcodes. Delivery in two-hour windows is now free on orders over £40 while the minimum order value has also been lowered from £40 to £15.
As well as free delivery in two-hour windows, Prime members in the postcodes can now choose delivery in a one-hour window on all orders over £40 for a delivery fee of £3.99
Prime members using Amazon Fresh in London and Surrey can choose from a selection of more than 180,000 Amazon items including fresh grocery and local products supplied by Booths and Whole Foods, as well brands including Pepsi, Danone and Warburtons.
Outside London in areas such as Cambridge, which also benefits from the new move, will have orders fulfilled though Amazon’s partnership with Morrison’s. In June the Supermarket said it had more than doubled the number of stores serving Amazon Prime customers to 40.
Russell Jones, country manager at Amazon Fresh UK, said sales have been “particularly strong” following the lockdown, but stressed that the latest move had been in the pipeline long before coronavirus hit the UK.
Jones said: “Prime members love the convenience of grocery delivery at home, which is why we’ve made Amazon Fresh a free benefit of Prime. Grocery delivery is one of the fastest growing businesses at Amazon and we think this will be one of the most-loved Prime benefits in the UK. We will keep improving the grocery shopping experience so by the end of the year, millions of Prime members across the UK will have access to fast, free delivery of groceries.”
According to the Office for National Statistics, e-commerce volumes in June were up 53.6% compared to February.
It is understood that the offer will roll out in Birmingham, Manchester and Edinburgh by the end of the year.
Amazon has been very acquisitive on the property trail this year and Logistics Manager has recorded leases and acquisitions totalling more than 11 million sq ft for 2020 alone, more than double the amount of space it acquired in 2018 which was a record year.
The company has secured 2.5 million sq ft at Follingsby Max in the North East, alongside a further 2 million sq ft at Gateway 45 in Leeds. It has been confirmed that it has secured 2.3 million sq ft at Tritax and Bericote’s Littlebrook scheme in Dartford, which the e-commerce giant was linked with back in February, and that it is behind a 2.3 million sq ft application for a mega shed in Swindon.
If that were not enough Amazon is understood to have taken developer Goodman’s Bedford 405 building at its 45-acre Bedford Commercial Park in Bedfordshire as well as Panattoni’s 500,000 sq ft mega shed in Nottingham.
The company has also leased or acquired nearly 500,000 sq ft across seven sites in the UK for use as delivery stations.
Amazon is also thought to have acquired the use of former Random House warehouse owned by Prologis in Rugby. The 376,000 sq ft warehouse at Rugby Central Park next to junction 1 of the M6, has been let 3PL XPO Logistics and will be run as an Amazon fulfilment centre .
According to the latest property research this means that Amazon alone has accounted for more than a third of warehouse space take-up across the UK this year.
