US e-commerce giant Amazon told customers and suppliers that it is “prepared” for the holiday season despite problems in the global supply chain.
This was pointed out by Amazon’s vice president of global delivery services, John Felton, in a blog post in which he wanted to address questions about the company’s operational capacity for distribution during the upcoming holidays.
Felton explained that the Seattle-based company has invested in airplanes, ships, trucks, warehouses, and personnel to “get customers what they want when they want it, where they want it” despite the difficulties of the current environment.
Specifically, Amazon will have a worldwide fleet of 85 planes and 50,000 trucks of its own and a network of 260,000 drivers to “bring the magic of Christmas to the door” of its customers.
Regarding ocean freight, Felton noted that the company “has doubled” its shipping container processing capacity in the last year after reaching agreements with carriers in “critical ports. “
“All of these teams work seamlessly with the more than one million Amazon employees around the world and the 150,000 additional warm and delivery control people that we are hiring this season in the US to help store, pick up, pack and ship customer orders, “he said.
In addition to these measures, the chief operating officer argued that Amazon has invested in inventory planning and supplier partnerships to have enough products in stock.
Amazon’s announcement comes at a time when the US and global supply chain has been heavily impacted by the covid-19 pandemic, mainly due to the large increase in demand through e-commerce and the shortage of personnel, including transporters and warehouse workers, among other reasons.
This situation has caused, for example, that hundreds of cargo ships have be stuck off the coast of California in recent months, with 62 cargo ships anchored this Monday in front of the docks of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
In Los Angeles alone, 200,000 containers are on anchored ships, according to data from the port infrastructure.
Those two ports handle about 40% of all containers in the United States and about 40% of US imports and 25% of exports.
In this context, US President Joe Biden announced two weeks ago that the port of Los Angeles will operate 24 hours a day, Monday through Sunday.
The decision of those responsible for the port of Los Angeles, agreed with the US Executive, followed that of its neighboring dock, Long Beach, which already adopted this measure a few weeks earlier.