Amazon plans to open a new delivery warehouse in Essex next year, creating 1,500 permanent jobs.
It will be the company’s 13th fulfilment centre in the UK, where Amazon employs a total of 15,500 people.
The warehouse is scheduled to open in Tilbury in the spring and will increase delivery capacity.
“Amazon is increasing the size of its UK fulfilment centre network to meet increasing customer demand, expand its product selection of more than 150m items and support the needs of a growing number of independent small businesses selling on Amazon Marketplace,” it said.
The Tilbury warehouse will be equipped with Amazon’s robotics technology, aimed at facilitating greater product selection and speeding up delivery. Product shelves move to the worker selecting items for delivery, and not the other way round, making the process quicker.
The robots slide under a tower of shelves where products are stocked, lift them and move them through the centre. Amazon said the technology also saved space, allowing for 50% more items to be stowed per square foot.
John Tagawa, vice president of UK operations, 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.”
This month the online retailer announced it would open a new centre in Doncaster next summer with the creation of 500 permanent jobs.
The jobs at Doncaster and Tilbury are in addition to the 3,500 permanent roles being created by Amazon in the UK in 2016. These include head office roles, customer services jobs, warehouse pickers, and employees at the company’s research and development centres.
It is creating jobs at a faster-than-planned rate this year as it rolls out its one-hour delivery operation and extends its web services.
Amazon said it was encouraged by the response to its food delivery service, Amazon Fresh, which launched in the UK last month, but has not commented on any expansion plans.
Amazon said it would be looking to fill a variety of roles at Tilbury including pickers, operations managers, engineers and IT and human resources workers.
