Amazon mulls building its largest warehouse in Egypt

Amazon started initial negotiations to acquire 100 feddans (420,000 square metres) acres in Egypt’s western city of Sohag to establish warehouses to serve the Upper Egypt region, SeeEgy reported on Monday.

The news website quoted informed sources as saying that the retail giant’s planned warehouse in the New Sohag city would be “Amazon’s largest in the world”, adding that the US e-commerce retailer had already contacted city officials “to determine the available plots of land to choose the best location.”

The sources added that the construction was aimed at “meeting the increasing demand for e-commerce products in the local market.”

Officials in the new city are seeking to conclude the deal to ensure that Amazon continues the allocation procedures and begins construction. The city administration recently submitted an offer to sell a square metre of warehouse land at a value of 860 Egyptian pounds ($54.56).

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The sources pointed out that the official price for selling such a plot would be 1,130 Egyptian pounds ($71.70) and could rise to about 1,400 pounds ($88.82) in line with the current boom in the industrial city.

Amazon is one of the largest e-commerce services companies in the world, and among the Big Four technology companies, along with Google, Apple and Facebook, according to the world’s largest brand equity database “BrandZ.”