At Amazon, we strive to continually improve our selection, value and convenience so we can further improve our overall customer experience. That’s why we’re excited to share today that we now have over 250 million unique products available on Amazon.co.uk, up by more than 100 million in the last 18 months. This significant growth in selection could only happen with support of small and medium sized UK businesses selling on Amazon.

This new selection includes products added for new services that we have launched such as Amazon Business, Handmade at Amazon and AmazonFresh - as well as continued growth in categories like home and garden, electronics and fashion.

Small businesses are using Amazon’s digital and physical infrastructure to grow their business online, boost their productivity, and increase their export capability. Tens of thousands of independent businesses of all sizes sell on Amazon, with more businesses than ever using our Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) offering that handles logistics and customer service for them. In fact, last year, the number of businesses taking advantage of FBA increased by more than 70%, and UK-based sellers exported more than £1.8 billion of goods in 2016 alone.

We continue to invest to help make it easier for SMEs to sell on Amazon.co.uk, including building additional fulfilment centres to support FBA. We this week announced plans to open a fulfilment centre in Warrington this year and Receive Centre in Coventry next year, creating thousands of jobs up and down the country. Warrington is one of four new fulfilment centres that Amazon will open in 2017.

Last year we announced we would open fulfilment centres in Daventry, Doncaster and Tilbury in 2017, creating more than 2,300 new permanent full time jobs. The Daventry site opened in February while Doncaster, Warrington and Tilbury will begin their operations in the autumn. These new investments deepen our roots here in the UK, and contribute to the £6.4bn of investment in the country since 2010. For more information on Amazon’s economic impact in the UK, click here.