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Amazon is to open a new fulfilment centre in Essex next spring to meet increasing customer demand and support the growing number of third party Amazon Marketplace sellers.
The new fulfilment centre in Tilbury, Essex, will open in spring 2017 and will create more than 1,500 new permanent jobs next year, the company said.
The Tilbury fulfilment centre will be equipped with the latest Amazon Robotics technology which launched earlier this year in the UK at Amazon’s fulfilment centres in Dunstable and Doncaster.
According to Amazon, the robots help speed order processing time and reduce walking time by moving the shelves to employees, reducing the time taken to stow items for sale or pick them for new customer orders. The robots also save space, allowing for 50% more items to be stowed per square foot, the company has said.
Amazon has said that permanent employees at the new fulfilment centre will receive "competitive pay" which will rise to £9 per hour after two years’ service in the greater London area. It also indicated that all permanent fulfilment centre employees are given stock grants, which over the last five years were on average equal to £1,000 or more per year per person, with employees also benefiting from a “comprehensive benefits package, including private medical insurance, a company pension plan, life assurance, income protection, subsidised meals and an employee discount”.
John Tagawa, Amazon’s vice president of UK operations, said: “We are excited to announce that we will be opening our 13th fulfilment centre in the UK in Tilbury in spring 2017 to enable us to continue to expand our product selection, support more third party sellers including small businesses with our fulfilment expertise and meet growing customer demand in the UK. We are delighted to be creating more than 1,500 new permanent full-time jobs with competitive wages and comprehensive benefits starting on day one.”
Amazon is also building a third fulfilment centre in Doncaster next year. The move will create 500 new full time permanent positions, the company said, bringing its overall number of Doncaster employees to 1,000 by the end of 2017.