French luxury conglomerate LVMH has broken ground in Shanghai on its largest e-commerce sales and storage hub for cosmetics in the Asia-Pacific region, which is scheduled to be operational by the end of next year.

The hub will serve as an industrial base for e-commerce packaging and dispatch for the group’s cosmetics and perfume products. It covers a nine hectare area and is expected to cost nearly 1 billion yuan ($154 million).

In 2020, the Asia market, excluding Japan, accounted for 45 percent of LVMH Group’s perfumes and cosmetics sales, according to the company’s annual report, making it the largest regional market for these categories. The China market in particular was singled out for playing a key role in regional growth.