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November 2, 2019 07:34 pm

Medium Investigates The Secret Supply Chain Behind AmazonBasics

"I heard the 'pop!' from my living room as a brand-new pack of Amazon batteries spontaneously exploded on the kitchen counter, oozing a gritty black substance in fits and spurts," reports the staff writer for Medium's new tech site, OneZero. But that was just the beginning of a larger mystery, according to their article (shared by Slashdot reader peterthegreat321):The small, unassuming item is one of Amazon's most popular "in-house" products sold under the AmazonBasics label. With nearly 20,000 customer reviews, its popularity dwarfs that of most other AmazonBasics items, which include electronics, homewares, and random odds and ends. The batteries are also highly rated -- had I received a defective set? I scoured the comments page for the alkaline battery for reviews containing the word "explode," revealing dozens of experiences like mine. One person said the batteries had burst in their wife's breast pump. Others had toys and appliances ruined by leaky fluid. Some customers blamed this on alleged Chinese manufacturing, but Amazon vaguely claims in the product's description that they are "made in Indonesia using Japanese technology." Over the past month, I have tried to uncover the hidden life cycle of this simple AmazonBasics battery. Amazon is fiercely secretive about its corporate footprint and masks its operations through a discreet network of outsourcing, making its supply chain hard to unravel. Its AA battery is no different. The product is indeed made in Indonesia, but not by Amazon, I learned. The company buys the batteries from a supplier and reskins them as its own, much like Trader Joe's and its eponymous food brand. Amazon has never voluntarily divulged the sources of AmazonBasics items, but it confirmed OneZero's reporting on where its AA batteries come from. Though I discovered where the batteries were made, I was unable to locate the source of their materials, for example. The difficulty in understanding the supply chain of even a simple component shows how Amazon's operations are deliberately designed to be a black box. This secrecy allows the commercial titan to be ruthlessly competitive, delivering cheaper items faster than rival stores. But it also makes it harder for consumers who wonder whether their purchases are ethically or sustainably sourced to even begin finding answers. Beyond obscuring why merchandise might be defective -- or explosive, in my case -- it hinders those of us who just want to know: Where does it all begin? The article eventually determines that Tokyo-based Fujitsu is a "covert supplier" for AmazonBasics, operating out of "a plain white building in West Java, Indonesia." Medium's reporter also notes that Fujitsu's sustainability report "shows that its Indonesian operations are among the dirtiest, ranking the highest on waste production..." But unfortunately, "I never discovered why my AmazonBasics batteries exploded."

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