With end of financial year sales winding down, I can finally look at online stores again without fearing the loss of all of my money [er... I've got bad news for you, Hope -Ed.]. Of course, in global news Amazon has managed to put my own finances in perspective, pledging to invest around $54 billion dollars into its operations in the UK. Now I feel poor without even having to spend a dime, thanks Bezos.
Reuters reports, the online shopping giant has just announced a commitment to invest $54 billion USD into its operations in Britain. The spend will take place over the next three years, and includes opening two new fulfilment centres which are set to open in 2027. This is in addition to the already planned centres around the country that are expected to open in the next two years.
The money will also go to opening more delivery stations across the United Kingdom, as well as upgrades to the existing buildings in operation. This includes an expansion to the corporate headquarters in London as well as some redevelopment works on other existing locations. It also includes funds going to the company's cloud computing arm, as well as salaries for employees, but not to any Steam competitor storefronts.
Amazon is presenting this as a mass creation of jobs within the UK. Currently, the corporation employs around 75,000 people in the UK, and boasts that the opening of new locations will only add to this. For example, the planned The Hull and Northampton sites are set to create 2,000 new jobs, each. The company is already a top-ten private sector employer in the UK, and this could move it further up the rankings.
The UK government is taking the investment from Amazon as a big thumbs up to its current economic strategy. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Amazon's plans represented "a massive vote of confidence in the UK as the best place to do business."
For UK consumers hopefully this means they'll have access to more stock and faster deliveries once this infrastructure is in place. With how hard PC parts can be nowadays, maybe this will help a few folks pick up a new graphics card.
The jobs also seem like a nice addition, especially for all those who dreamed of working in an Amazon factory one day. Having a giant ecommerce platform go all in on your tiny island sounds fairly intimidating, but if anyone can handle a rich foreign power coming in and making huge investments into their way of life, it has to be the UK.
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Hope’s been writing about games for about a decade, starting out way back when on the Australian Nintendo fan site Vooks.net. Since then, she’s talked far too much about games and tech for publications such as Techlife, Byteside, IGN, and GameSpot. Of course there’s also here at PC Gamer, where she gets to indulge her inner hardware nerd with news and reviews. You can usually find Hope fawning over some art, tech, or likely a wonderful combination of them both and where relevant she’ll share them with you here. When she’s not writing about the amazing creations of others, she’s working on what she hopes will one day be her own. You can find her fictional chill out ambient far future sci-fi radio show/album/listening experience podcast right here.
No, she’s not kidding.
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