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Mercado Livre will install a new distribution center in Itupeva, with 2,400 jobs and operations expected to start in July.
About 2,400 new jobs will be created in Itupeva, in the interior of São Paulo, brought by Mercado Livre. The company chose the municipality to install a new Distribution Center of 52,000 square meters, with operations expected to run 24 hours a day and partial operations starting in July. The definitive structure is expected to be fully operational in November. The project is part of an expansion plan by the company in Brazil, supported by an investment of R$ 57 billion announced for 2026.
An investment that puts Itupeva on the national logistics map
The arrival of Mercado Livre is not an isolated event in Itupeva’s trajectory. The municipality had already attracted other major names to its industrial and logistics park, including Mercedes-Benz — which maintains a unit there that supplies parts to the entire country, to more than 50 countries in Latin America and other continents, as well as meeting demands from the Daimler Truck headquarters in Germany.
The privileged geographical position and infrastructure of the municipality are cited as decisive factors for attracting investments of this magnitude. With the arrival of the new distribution center, Itupeva consolidates its relevance in the logistics sector of the state of São Paulo.
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Why is Mercado Livre expanding so rapidly?
The new center in Itupeva is not an isolated case: it is part of a structural growth offensive by the company across the national territory. Mercado Livre announced an investment of R$ 57 billion in Brazil in 2026 — a value 50% higher than the R$ 38 billion invested the previous year and the largest investment ever made by the company in the country.
The resources will be directed to three main fronts:
- Logistics: expansion of the distribution center network and improvement of the delivery chain;
- Marketplace: strengthening of the sales platform;
- Financial services: growth of the credit and digital payments arm.
One of the most concrete moves of this plan is the opening of 14 new distribution centers in the fulfillment model — a modality in which Mercado Livre itself stores and ships sellers’ products. With this, the network will jump from 28 to 42 units throughout Brazil.
The potential of Brazilian e-commerce explains the bet
For Fernando Yunes, executive vice president of Commerce for the company in Latin America and responsible for the Brazilian operation, the numbers show that Brazil still has a lot of room to grow in e-commerce.
“Penetration is still around 16% to 17%, well below other markets, and we see a very large potential for growth”, Yunes said in an interview with Estadão/Broadcast.
Compared to countries where e-commerce has already matured, this relatively low share of digital retail in Brazil represents a wide window of opportunity — and Mercado Livre is betting billion-dollar resources exactly in this direction.
Therefore, the arrival of the distribution center in Itupeva is not just good news for the municipality: it is the reflection of a long-term strategy that positions Brazil as one of the company’s main markets in Latin America.
Source: Prefeitura de Itupeva
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