Amazon to open new £450m fulfilment centre in Stockton-on-Tees

Amazon is planning to create 2,000 jobs in the north-east with the opening of a new £450m fulfilment centre featuring three floors of Amazon Robotics technology. This news comes after the retail giant announced a host of job cuts earlier this year. 

The company outlined its plans to open the new facility in Stockton-on-Tees, Country Durham, in October 2023. This will be the fourth centre in the north-east of England and one of three new warehouses opened in the UK. 

It comes just months after Amazon outlined plans to cut 9,000 jobs on top of the 18,000 cuts that had been revealed earlier in the year. The company had also announced the closure of three warehouses and seven delivery sites in the UK, which placed 1,200 jobs at risk. It has since added that most workers affected by this move were assigned other roles. 

The new fulfilment centre in Stockton-on-Tees will launch with up to 1,000 employees once it starts taking orders in October, and this number will grow to 2,000 over time, according to Amazon. The company has started recruiting for a range of roles, including engineers, HR and IT professionals, as well as teams that handle the packing and shipment of orders. 

On Monday (17th July), GMB union members at an Amazon site in Staffordshire voted to strike over pay. Warehouse staff in Coventry, already taking strike action, also recently voted for six more months of industrial action.