Amazon is marking its territory for the company's growing fleet of cargo airplanes. The online retailer announced it will build a new air cargo hub at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky Airport in Hebron, Kentucky. This hub will house Amazon's family of cargo airplanes that transport packages across the country, and it shows Amazon is serious about its efforts to better control the process of sorting, shipping, and delivering its packages.

“As we considered places for the long-term home for our air hub operations, Hebron quickly rose to the top of the list with a large, skilled workforce, centralized location with great connectivity to our nearby fulfillment locations, and an excellent quality of living for employees," Dave Clark, Amazon's Senior Vice President of Worldwide Operations, stated in the press release. "We feel strongly that with these qualities as a place to do business, our investments will support Amazon and customers well into the future."

The hub will reportedly cost about $1.5 billion to build and would create over 2,000 jobs with 600 full-time positions coming initially. According to the Cincinnati Business Courier, this new hub will be Amazon's largest in the world. The new jobs created will add to the already 10,000 employees Amazon has in that area.

Amazon has expanded its network of shipping options dramatically over the past couple years. Amazon has been leasing cargo airplanes since 2016, it expanded its trucking capacity with its own fleet of 4,000 trucks, and the company even makes use of regular citizens who make deliveries as Flex drivers. Amazon also recently started transporting items from China to the US with the launch of its ocean freight shipping operation.

The company's long-term goal is to deliver its packages by itself without relying on third-party delivery services like USPS, FedEx, and UPS. While Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has said the company isn't trying to directly compete with the likes of UPS, all of these investments in transportation and shipping operations suggest otherwise. If nothing else, they signal Amazon's desire to control more of the shipping process in general, which would lead to lower shipping costs for the company overall. While Amazon's parcel shipping business is still in its early stages, some analysts say it could prove to be a "billion dollar market opportunity"—if Amazon gets it right.