Shein Expands Poland Footprint as EU Begins Charging Fees on Overseas Parcels

Chinese fast-fashion e-commerce platform Shein is expanding its footprint in Poland in response to the EU's new handling fees on overseas parcels.

According to Bloomberg and AFP, in response to the EU tightening customs rules on overseas parcels, Shein, which is headquartered in Singapore and listed in Hong Kong, said on Wednesday (November 4) that it will invest 500 million euros (S$719 million) to expand its logistics center in Wrocław, Poland.

Shein has had a base in Poland since 2022.

The new investment will expand warehouse capacity, bring robots into order processing, and create thousands of new jobs, increasing headcount to 10,000 by the end of this year.

Starting in July this year, the EU formally imposed a fee of 3 euros per low-value e-commerce parcel imported into the EU, in a bid to curb the influx of cheap goods from Chinese e-commerce platforms such as Shein, Temu and AliExpress into the European market.

From November, the EU announced an additional handling fee of 2 euros per overseas parcel.

Last year, nearly 5.9 billion small parcels flowed into the European market, more than four times the number in 2022, of which 93% entered through Chinese e-commerce platforms such as Shein, Temu and AliExpress.