MOSCOW, August 22. /TASS/. Wildberries, a Russian e-commerce company, has invested about 8 billion rubles ($133 mln) in the construction of a logistics center in the Samara region, the company said.

"The construction of the Wildberries logistics center in the Samara region began on the territory of the Novosemeykino industrial park. The area of the new facility will be 100,000 square meters, its opening will create 5,000 new jobs in the region. <…> The amount of investment amounted to about 8 billion rubles," the company said.

According to the company's CEO Tatyana Bakalchuk, about 10,000 entrepreneurs from the Samara region are already registered with Wildberries, which is 2.5 times more than a year ago, and their sales increased by 148% - up to 5 billion rubles ($83 mln) in January-July 2022.

"We hope that with the creation of a large distribution center, entrepreneurs of the Samara region will be able to significantly increase their turnover," Bakalchuk noted.

According to the press service of the region's government, the head of the region Dmitry Azarov and Bakalchuk have already agreed on the project's expansion in the future.

"We expect that 10,000 jobs will be created here in the future," said Azarov, expressing hope that the work will start ahead of schedule - in the end of 2023.

In 2022, the company opened 28 logistics centers across the country. New facilities have been launched in 18 regions of the country. The total area of the company's logistics centers exceeds 1.3 million square meters and by the beginning of the high sales season, Wildberries will launch 200,000 square meters of new warehouse space.