Damien Kantor
11/03/2020 8:11 PM
Clarín.com
Economy
Updated 11/03/2020 8:18 PM
With the aim of speeding up merchandise deliveries,
Mercado Libre today officially launched Meli Air in Brazil, its own fleet of aircraft
.
Actually, there are 4 planes contracted to airlines, which
will operate exclusively
for the company founded by Marcos Galperin.
The ships bear the color yellow, the distinctive logo of the brand (a handshake) and the legend
"Mercado Livre"
, as it is known in that country.
"Meli Air has arrived in Brazil," Galperin himself announced on Twitter this afternoon in very prolific Portuguese.
The effort to
improve the logistics of its Mercado Envíos division
has two reasons.
On the one hand, on average dispatches today take 48 hours, but in remote areas the times are much longer.
The other reason is the importance of the Brazilian market for Mercado Libre: it
represents 53% of the total turnover of the firm
, which has a presence in 18 countries in the region, including Argentina and Mexico.
The air fleet will complement a land fleet,
made up of more than 100 transport trucks.
The plan is to more quickly connect the three main storage and distribution centers (2 in São Paulo and the other in Bahia) and its extensive network of distribution and logistics points that Mercado Libre has in Brazil.
With the aircraft fleet, "the company will reduce package delivery times, in addition to increasing the delivery capacity for the next day by purchasing products stored in its distribution centers," the company explained in a statement.
In Brazil,
Mercado Libre's
e-commerce portal
billed US $ 465 million
in the second quarter of the year.
In that period,
168.5 million products were sold
, most of which (157.5 million) were shipped through Mercado Envíos.
In that country, they have
51 million active users and 11 million sellers
, including individuals, businesses and companies.
For the marketplace business, logistics is a key aspect, both in terms of costs and times.
Without going any further, of its total workforce (4,500 employees)
2,500 work in the distribution and storage centers.
Meli Air has been operational since last month, they trusted this newspaper from the company.
As mentioned, the 4 aircraft are owned and operated by Azul Lineas Aereas, Latam Cargo, Total Lineas Aereas and Sideral.
They are full-time charters and it is a very similar scheme to that of the large trucks that transport the merchandise.
And that they were "branded" with the same color, the logo and the legend of the Galperin team.
With regard to the air fleet, the company ruled out replicating it in Argentina.
They said that Brazil has a very extensive territory and very difficult to cover.
The airplanes will arrive in Porto Alegre, Manaus, Recife, Salvador, Fortaleza, Goiás, Spirito Santo and from those headwaters, the shipments will be sent to the logistics centers to send them to their recipients.