Mercado Libre, the major Latin American marketplace and ecommerce firm, has said that it will open two large distribution centres in Mexico as part of an effort to improve its logistics in the country and fuel its development and growth. The distribution centres will provide a total of 1.4 million square feet and are located in the state of Mexico, close to Mexico City.
What’s clear is that Mexico is increasingly becoming an ecommerce market and a growing economy of interest to marketplaces and investors. Amazon is already investing strongly and Mercado Libre continues to develop. But locally, and the reason why they’re hoping to add efficiency, is because available logistics in the country are underdeveloped. The area is vast, with many geographical problems in terms of fulfilment, but there is an ever-developing thirst for online shopping too.
And for as long as Mercado Libre is growing and popular they’re going to continue to grow. Expansion might be stifled for a lack of delivery options.
As fast as possible – that is going to be the experience of ecommerce. That is the big difference between people who go to retail stores with packages in their arms, and people who shop online – how long it takes. Logistics is the most difficult part to solve, because it’s very expensive, and it requires lots of people, and it requires a very big investment.
– Ignacio Caride, CEO Mercado Libre
Mercado Libre is the most popular ecommerce retailer in Latin America and operates in 18 countries. It’s also the 8th most-visited retail site in the world, reportedly receiving 4,000 searches per second, and has 24 million buyers and 8 million sellers.
We look forward to reporting further on this story to best understand how marketplace merchants can best plug into this new facility and precisely understand the offering. But it does look like they’re developing something similar to Amazon FBA.
