A massive fire at a Coupang warehouse in South Korea was contained late Monday after more than 61 hours of firefighting efforts, potentially resulting in hundreds of millions in damages for the e-commerce seller.
The fire broke out at around 6:54 a.m. local time on Saturday on the sixth floor of Coupang’s eight-story, 3.2-million-square-foot logistics center in Incheon, west of Seoul, and spread to the seventh floor, according to fire authorities.
A report from Korea JoongAng Daily indicated that the damage could amount to “several hundred billion” Korean won (several hundred million U.S. dollars) in losses, upon accounting for losses to the building, inventory and business operations.
Coupang has not publicly quantified expected operational disruption or financial damage.
All 121 workers inside the building were safely evacuated, Coupang said. On Sunday, authorities ordered nearby businesses and factories to evacuate over concerns that parts of the building could collapse.
Two firefighters were hospitalized after suffering smoke inhalation and exhaustion.
The cause of the fire has not been confirmed, but the fulfillment center holds flammables such as household products, paper boxes and vinyl packaging. Authorities are preparing a joint investigation with police and other agencies.
The eight-floor warehouse serves the Seoul metropolitan area and is used to store goods for Coupang’s same-day delivery service, Rocket Delivery.
Delivery delays are expected in parts of Incheon and western Seoul served by the warehouse. Coupang is likely to redirect inventory from nearby facilities to minimize disruptions. If deliveries are delayed, Coupang plans to provide customers with compensation coupons worth several thousand won, or several dollars, if deliveries are delayed.
A total of 845 personnel and 239 fire trucks were deployed from eight neighboring cities and provinces over the three days of round-the-clock firefighting operations.
Coupang previously endured a major warehouse fire in June 2021 at its Deokpyeong logistics center in Icheon, which destroyed the 1.4-million-square-foot facility and resulted in the death of a firefighter. That fire was fully extinguished six days after it began. Property and inventory losses estimated at between 400 billion won ($270.9 million) and 600 billion won ($406.4 million).
The Coupang fire followed another major blaze that demolished a 2-million-square-foot logistics center at South Korean retailer E-Land World eight months ago.
The site hosted 11 million products, including clothing, footwear and accessories, and saw delivery delays and cancelations in the days after. In that incident, the northern section of the warehouse partially collapsed, while the southern exterior was stripped away by heat and flames.
Russia’s Wildberries faces up to $1.3 billion in losses after Ukrainian drone attack
The Coupang fire coincided with another major disruption involving an e-commerce warehouse network.
Russia‘s largest online marketplace, Wildberries, said Ukrainian drone strikes on two of its logistics centers could leave the company and its third-party sellers facing more than $1.3 billion in losses.
The Saturday night strikes hit Wildberries warehouses in central Russia: one in Elektrostal near Moscow and the other roughly 340 miles southeast in Kotovsk.
Seven workers were killed in Kotovsk and another person later died after the Elektrostal attack, while more than 80 people were injured, according to Russian officials. Fires continued at the Elektrostal complex for more than a day.
The Elektrostal warehouse was a key facility for Moscow and the surrounding region and one of Wildberries’ single largest fulfillment centers, spanning 2.7 million square feet. The 1.16-million-square-foot Kotovsk warehouse served logistics for southern Russia.
The attack on Wildberries dealt a serious blow to the infrastructure of what is often referred to as Russia’s version of Amazon. According to an estimate by Russian business newspaper Kommersant. at least 7 percent of the company’s total logistics capacity was wiped out during the weekend strikes alone.
Kommersant estimated the damage at between $270 million and $450 million, based solely on the cost of rebuilding the warehouse space, without considering the stored goods, for which sellers are now demanding compensation.
Another Russian publication, estimated that combined losses from the two warehouse fires would exceed 100 billion Russian rubles ($1.28 billion), with merchants using the marketplace carrying most of the burden.
Wildberries said it assess compensation in the next 30 days and offer some technical relief to third-party sellers in the form of loans, delayed debt repayments and faster revenue withdrawals.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky described the weekend’s attacks as retaliation for strikes on Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure, saying Wildberries warehouses had been used to store sanctioned components for drone production and navigation systems.
