Amazon makes big change to Prime delivery

More Aussies are set to benefit after Amazon revealed a major change regarding its free Prime one-day delivery service.

More Aussies are set to benefit after Amazon makes a major announcement regarding its free Prime one-day delivery service.

More Aussies are set to benefit after Amazon made a major announcement regarding its free Prime one-day delivery service.

The retail behemoth has revealed that Aussies living in Brisbane, Geelong, Gosford, Newcastle and Wollongong can now access free one-day delivery, providing they are subscribers to its Prime offering.

Before today, free one-day delivery was only available for residents in most of Sydney and Melbourne, while elsewhere, Aussies had to pay for Express Post to get Amazon deliveries the next day.

Amazon Australia general manager Matthew Benham also flagged that the company was looking to roll out free, next-day delivery for residents of Adelaide in the future.

Mathew Benham, general manger of Amazon Australia, which is rolling out free one-day delivery to more Australians.

The expansion comes after Amazon spent more than $5 billion on growing its Australian distribution network in 2022 and it now has six fulfilment centres in Australia.

Mr Benham said the company is looking to offer one-day delivery to Adelaide once a new fulfilment centre it’s building in the Melbourne outer-northern suburb of Craigieburn opens in late 2025.

“By building fulfilment centres and delivery stations close to where our customers live and work, packages travel shorter distances, which enables us to speed up delivery,” Mr Benham added.

Besides free next-day delivery, Prime members can also stream Amazon Prime video. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Nicholas Eagar

Aside from free one-day delivery on eligible retail purchases made on the Amazon Australia website, Prime members also get access to Amazon’s Prime video channel and Amazon Music.

Prime membership costs $9.99 per month or $79 for an annual membership.

Products eligible for free, one-day delivery are those from retailers who subscribe to the company’s Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) service.

Items from these retailers can be ordered as late as midnight for next day delivery, no minimum spend applies and products are also delivered of an evening and over the weekend.

Amazon Flex uses self-employed gig economy delivery drivers such as Venkatesh Sripathi, pictured at its West Gosford distribution centre. Picture: NewsLocal

Amazon has adopted a similar model of having fulfilment centres located across the country in its native US, in order to enable it to offer fast delivery.

Traditionally, Australia’s large geographic size and smaller population have presented challenges for delivery, and to facilitate speedy delivery, Amazon has also built its own delivery service, Amazon Flex.

Amazon Flex uses self-employed gig economy delivery drivers who are paid for the hours they work.

Mr Benham said Amazon’s delivery capacity increased by almost 50 per cent in 2023.