Amazon to create 1,500 jobs in Essex

Amazon is continuing its UK expansion with a new fulfilment centre in Tilbury, Essex, which will create more than 1,500 new permanent jobs.

The new fulfilment centre will be Amazon’s 13th in the UK and is needed to meet increasing customer demand, expand its product selection of more than 150 million items and support the needs of a growing number of independent small businesses selling on Amazon Marketplace using Fulfilment by Amazon warehousing and delivery.

The facility, expected to open in 2017, will create more than 1,500 new permanent jobs, including operations managers, engineers, HR and IT roles and customer order handlers.

The Tilbury fulfilment centre will be equipped with the latest and most advanced Amazon Robotics technology, which launched earlier this year in the UK at Amazon’s fulfilment centres in Dunstable and Doncaster. The robots help speed order processing time by moving the shelves where products are stowed, reducing the time take to pick them for customer orders. They also save space, allowing for 50 percent more items to be stowed per square foot.

Amazon’s vice president of UK operations, John Tagawa, said: “The Amazon teams are dedicated to innovating in our fulfilment centres to increase speed of delivery while enabling greater selection at lower costs for our customers. The introduction of Amazon Robotics is the newest example of our commitment to invention in logistics on behalf of our employees and our customers.”

The online retail giant has invested more than 4.6 billion pounds in the UK economy to build and run its UK business since 2010. It currently has ten fulfilment centres in the UK up-and-running, including two in Doncaster and one each in Dunfermline, Dunstable, Gourock, Hemel Hempstead, Milton Keynes, Peterborough, Rugeley and Swansea Bay. In the autumn, the retailer will open two new fulfilment centres in Manchester and Coalville, Leicestershire, creating 1,500 new permanent jobs over three years.

Amazon also announced earlier this month that it will open a new fulfilment centre in Doncaster in summer 2017 which will create 500 new full-time permanent jobs.

Image: courtesy of Amazon UK