American electronic commerce giant Amazon is set to take over organic food specialist Whole Foods Market, at a price of $13.7 billion (Rs 883.6 billion), said The Guardian on Friday. “Millions of people love Whole Foods Market because they offer the best natural and organic foods, and they make it fun to eat healthy,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and chief executive officer.
Whole Foods Market co-founder and CEO John Mackey called the acquisition “an opportunity to maximise value for Whole Foods Market’s shareholders, while at the same time extending our mission and bringing the highest quality, experience, convenience and innovation to our customers”.
The deal is expected to be closed in the second half of 2017, CNBC reported.
Amazon had first ventured into the fresh food delivery service market in the United States eight years ago. It also launched the service in the United Kingdom last year after signing a wholesale deal with British supermarket Morrisons, said The Guardian. But this is the company’s biggest venture yet into brick-and-mortar retail.
Whole Foods Market was founded in Austin, Texas in 1980 and is now present in 460 locations including in the UK. But its sales have declined rapidly of late. After six straight quarters of decline in sales, Whole Foods Market announced in February that it was closing down nine stores in the US.
Mackey, who will remain CEO after Amazon takes over, attributed the decline to improvements by conventional, mainstream supermarkets. “The world is very different today than it was five years ago.”
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