Amazon has announced the launch of its Pan-European Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) programme.

This new service will help sellers of any size export to millions of Amazon customers across the EU more efficiently than ever before, the e-tailing giant said in a statement. Amazon customers in turn will be able to receive thousands of new products from sellers across the EU, while benefitting from faster shipping times and lower delivery costs.

Th e launch is further evidence of Amazon’s ‘disruptive’ ambitions to move deeper into logistics in Europe essentially serving as a Europe-wide third-party logistics provider (3PL) by off ering retailers the use of its logistics network for warehousing and fulfilment, as well as the benefits of its scale and purchasing power.

Pan-European FBA enables sellers to deliver their inventory to a local fulfilment centre for Amazon to take care of the logistics; automatically shipping sellers’ products across its European Fulfilment Network according to the anticipated local customer demand. Amazon will then pick, pack and ship orders to customers from the closest fulfilment centre where the product is available, as well as handling all customer service inquiries for the seller. For the delivery, sellers will only pay the local fulfilment fee of the marketplace in which the product was ordered, Amazon underlining that there is no European Fulfilment Network cross-border fee.

Tens of thousands of SMEs already sell to Amazon customers across the EU with over 50 per cent of EU sellers, selling on more than one Amazon Marketplace in the EU as at Q1 2016. Globally, FBA delivered more than one billion items to customers worldwide in 2015.