Australia’s love affair with online shopping has spurred e-commerce giant Amazon to expand its operations in the country.
Amazon Australia is opening its first Amazon Robotics fulfilment centre in the country. Based in Sydney and targeted for completion in late 2021, the fulfilment centre will have a total floor area of around 200,000 square metres across four levels and house up to 11 million items.
The new facility is Amazon’s second fulfilment centre in Sydney. It is expected to create 700 jobs during construction and 1,500 jobs in IT, human resources and robotics once it is up and running.
‘The Amazon Robotics fulfilment centre will more than double our operational footprint in Australia, enhance efficiency and safety for our associates while ultimately providing customers with wider selection and faster delivery,’ says Craig Fuller, Director of Operations, Amazon Australia.
‘This investment will also benefit the 10,000-plus small and medium-sized businesses who utilise Fulfilment By Amazon to seamlessly service customers across the country.’
According to Euromonitor, Australia’s e-commerce market was valued at US$25 billion in 2019 and is predicted to grow by 36% annually to reach US$45 billion by 2024.
The Amazon Robotics fulfilment centre is the latest facility established by Amazon in Australia. In June 2020, the company announced it was building a new fulfilment centre in Brisbane, its first in Queensland. The centre is expected to begin operations by December 2020.
These two facilities will bring Amazon Australia’s total number of fulfilment centres to five. The company’s other three facilities are in Dandenong South, Melbourne (opened December 2017), Moorebank, Sydney (opened August 2018) and Perth (opened November 2019).
Amazon entered the Australian market in December 2017 and offers customers 125 million products across 31 different categories including Amazon devices.
