Following 11 days of great deals and millions of pounds worth of savings in The Black Friday Sale on Amazon.co.uk, Black Friday 2016 is here with brand new deals becoming available as often as every five minutes until 23:39 tonight.

Doug Gurr, UK Country Manager, Amazon, commented: “We’ve had a very positive customer response to the thousands of deals during our extended 12 day Black Friday Sale and customers have been snapping up lots of our great deals on offer since midnight. Our Alexa devices, Echo and Echo Dot, are among our top-selling Black Friday deals today so it looks like Alexa is going to be wishing a lot of customers a Merry Christmas this year.

“These devices are just some of thousands of Black Friday deals across consumer electronics, fashion, home, beauty and entertainment available today offering Amazon customers millions of pounds worth of savings so they can get an early start on their Christmas shopping.

“Customers are telling us again that they love Black Friday, with the most popular deals including 60% off Real Techniques Make-Up brush set, 59% off the Instant Pot Duo 7-in-1 Electric Pressure Cooker and 61% off Philips Sonicare EasyClean Toothbrush. This year we’re thrilled to have over 1,000 small businesses participating in our Black Friday Sale, broadening the selection for our customers and enabling those businesses to boost their sales in the run up to Christmas. Many of the independent businesses on Amazon have already enjoyed impressive sales during the Black Friday Sale, offering great deals on thousands of products.”

This year, more than 1,000 Amazon sellers are participating in The Black Friday Sale providing an even greater selection of products for customers. Items available today include Lavolio’s luxury giftwrapped confectionary and the Luxelu Luxury Microfibre Towel.

Lavinia Davolio, Founder, Lavolio, commented: “We’re really excited to be part of the Black Friday Sale on Amazon for the very first time, offering great discounts off our range of best-selling luxury confectionary. As a small business that only started selling on Amazon earlier this year, it gives us great exposure to have deals running throughout Black Friday, helping to boost sales and grow our business.”

Amazon has been investing heavily in its UK infrastructure throughout 2016 to be ready for what is expected to be its biggest Christmas on record. Amazon is on track to create 3,500 permanent full time jobs this year across its Head Offices, Development Centre, Fulfilment Centres and Customer Service Centre. Amazon opened two new Fulfilment Centres this year, in Manchester and Coalville. The sites have created over 1,500 new permanent jobs from operations managers to engineers, HR and IT roles to teams handling customer orders. Amazon has invested more than £4.6 billion in the UK economy to build and run its UK business since 2010.