Amazon is downsizing its bloated delivery operation in the wake of COVID-driven growth, abandoning dozens of existing and planned warehouses.

Consulting firm MWPVL International tracks Amazon’s physical footprint. They estimate 42 facilities have been either shut down or abandoned, with an additional 21 located suffering from delayed opening.

“There remains some serious cutting to do before year-end, in North America and the rest of the world,” said Marc Wulfraat, MWPVL President. “Having said this, they continue to go live with new facilities this year at an astonishing pace.”

Like many Australian businesses, Amazon seem to have expanded too quickly during the pandemic.

“We weigh a variety of factors when deciding where to develop future sites to best serve customers,” Maria Boschetti, an Amazon spokesperson, said.

“We have dozens of fulfilment centres, sortation centres and delivery stations under construction and evolving around the world.

Justifying the closures and scaling back of plans, Boschetti said: “We regularly look at how we can improve the experience for our employees, partners, drivers and customers, and that includes upgrading our facilities.”

During the second quarter of 2022, Amazon cut roughly 100,000 jobs to 1.52 million, which Bloomberg calls “the biggest quarter-to-quarter contraction in the company’s history.”