Shopee lifts Brazilian capacity 60% in a year and waits on medicine sales rules

what happened

According to Reuters, Shopee, the online retail unit of Singapore's Sea, has launched four new distribution hubs in Brazil and enlarged one existing site. The company said on Tuesday that these moves lifted its local capacity by 60% over the past year. At an event near São Paulo, it named new cross-docking sites in Recife, Rio de Janeiro, Vitória and Blumenau, and said the working floor space at its Piracicaba facility has been tripled.

The added capacity allows processing of 2.4 million orders a day, though the company did not disclose its total order volume in Brazil. Shopee now runs 30 facilities there, made up of 25 cross-docking centers and five fulfillment centers, up from 16 a year ago. The company entered Brazil in 2020 and competes with Amazon and MercadoLibre among the leading online retailers.

On medicines, Felipe Lima, director of business development and fulfillment operations, said Shopee will wait for the health regulator Anvisa to finalize its rules before potentially letting pharmacies sell drugs on the platform. A law passed by Congress this year permits online marketplaces to sell medications, but Anvisa is still drafting its own regulations. “We have been closely following the regulatory process, including talks with Anvisa, and we believe we still need greater clarity over the legislation before making any move,” he said.

why it matters

For markets, the story is mainly a sign of intensifying competition in Brazil's online retail sector, where Shopee is challenging MercadoLibre and Amazon. The timing and format of allowing pharmacies to sell medicines online depend on Anvisa's rules, so the category's arrival on marketplaces remains uncertain.

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