Alibaba ramps up its expansion plans with new office in Australia
Alibaba has its eyes on more success Down Under, with the opening of a new base in Melbourne.
It marks the e-commerce giant's first expansion in the region, as it looks to capitalise on growing global demand for products from both Australia and New Zealand.
Founder Jack Ma said at the launch of his firm's new Australian and New Zealand headquarters that the "gold mine" there was its clean water, soil and air.
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"I really admire Australia and New Zealand for protecting the environment," he said. "This is the most unique asset."
Cutting the ribbon on @AlibabaGroup new ANZ HQ in Melbourne with #JackMa, @DanielAndrewsMP and @philipdalidakis. pic.twitter.com/0WRPBQlNoL
— Global Victoria (@Global_Vic) February 4, 2017
In a statement the company said there are more than 1,300 Australian and 400 New Zealand brands on Alibaba's marketplaces Tmall and Tmall Global.
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The Melbourne office will be led by Maggie Zhou, who said in a statement: "A physical Alibaba headquarters is a key step in ensuring Australian businesses have the support and information they need to succeed in China and the rest of the world."
The development comes after Alibaba's cloud computing arm Alibaba Cloud opened a data centre in Sydney last year.
Alibaba announced last month it had a better than expected 54 per cent surge in third quarter revenue, driven by the world's biggest online shopping day of the year with Singles' Day.
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Alibaba's revenue hit 53.25bn yuan (£6.16bn) for the three months ended 31 December, compared with analysts' average estimate of 50.10bn yuan.
Ma has said Alibaba's platform has the potential to create 100m jobs worldwide, connect with 2bn customers and make 10m small businesses profitable.