Amazon retreats from Singapore groceries, leans on cross-border instead

"Amazon entered the grocery space in 2017 through Prime Now, before rebranding the service as Amazon Fresh and tying it to local partnerships, including a deal with AS Watson's Cold Storage and a tie-up with Little Farms for organic and specialty produce. The competitive arithmetic never quite worked."

"Peter Li, country manager for Amazon Singapore, said in the company's announcement that the changes were a response to demand patterns: customers in Singapore, the company has concluded, mostly want goods from Amazon's US, Japanese and German stores rather than locally stocked replenishment."

"Singapore was never an obvious fit for the Amazon Fresh model. The country is small, dense, and already served by FairPrice, RedMart, Sheng Siong and a thicket of last-mile delivery players."

Amazon is shutting down Amazon Fresh and its local fulfilment network in Singapore effective July 6. A small number of Singapore roles will be eliminated, with affected staff offered internal transfers or severance packages. Country manager Peter Li attributed the closure to customer demand patterns, noting that Singaporean shoppers predominantly prefer goods from Amazon's US, Japanese, and German stores rather than locally stocked items. The company maintains approximately 2,500 employees across Singapore in retail, Global Selling, entertainment, devices, and AWS—none of which are affected. Amazon Fresh faced challenges in Singapore's competitive grocery market, which already features established players like FairPrice, RedMart, and Sheng Siong, making the economics of local delivery unsustainable.

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