2,500 jobs in new Amazon warehouse
Internet retailer opens fourth distribution centre in France – just weeks after getting €198million tax demand
JUST two weeks after Amazon received a €198million tax demand from the French fisc, the internet retailer has revealed it is opening its fourth distribution centre in France and employing up to 2,500 staff over the next three years.
The new site, at Lauwin-Planque near Douai (Nord-Pas-de-Calais) will open towards summer 2013 and, at 90,000sq.m, dwarfs the company’s other sites in France.
In all, the Sevrey site at Chalon-sur-Saône (Saône-et-Loire), which opened in September; Montélimar (Drôme) opened in 2010 and Saran, near Orléans (Loiret) opened in 2007, total about 156,000sq.m and employ 1,400 permanent staff.
Lauwin-Planque sits beside both the A1 Paris-Lille motorway and the Valenciennes-Calais A21 and the new warehouse will make Amazon the second-largest employer in the Douai area after Renault. Unemployment in the area sits at 16%.
Amazon’s French logistics director, Frédéric Duval, said: “This new phase of development allows the group to offer a wider range of products and services to our customers.”
Two weeks ago the fisc targeted Amazon and claimed €198m in back taxes as the internet retailer paid just €3.3m in tax in 2011 on booming business in France. Amazon says it pays full tax in Luxembourg, its European base, which has a lower taxation regime.
The taxman has already launched action against Google, which paid just €5.4m on French revenues of up to €1.4billion. Other companies are in the sights, including Starbucks and KFC which have never paid any taxes in all their time in France.
Estimates suggest that companies using double taxation regimes to avoid taxes could be costing France €1bn a year.
