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Selling food is a key part of the strategy of the world's top
online retailer, especially since it bought the U.S. chain Whole
Foods in 2017, but its Fresh service, launched in 2007 in
Seattle, has grown much slower than the rest of the business.
A spokeswoman confirmed a report in Germany's Lebensmittel
Zeitung trade publication that DHL was ending its cooperation
with Amazon Fresh, adding the rest of its business with Amazon
was unaffected.
"The market for online ordered fresh food has been far behind
expectations to date. Due to this reason and the complexity of
the whole process, we have significantly reduced our activities
in this area," she said.
An Amazon spokesman declined to comment, beyond saying that the
Fresh service had received positive feedback in Germany,
Amazon's second biggest market outside of the United States.
Online sales of food have grown slower in Germany than in many
developed markets, partly due to the high density of discount
stores like Aldi and Lidl. Ecommerce only made up about 1.2% of
food sales in Germany in 2018, according to the HDE retail
association.
A company source said customers of Amazon Fresh would not be
affected by the DHL move.
Amazon is building up its own delivery network in Germany,
independent of big logistics players like Deutsche Post DHL.
Earlier this month, FedEx Corp said it would end its contract
with Amazon for small-package ground deliveries, as the online
retailer becomes more of a threat than a customer by expanding
its own delivery network of planes, trucks and vans.
(Reporting by Matthias Inverardi; Writing by Emma Thomasson;
Editing by Michelle Martin
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