Amazon Australia announces second robotics fulfilment centre
Set to be Australia’s largest once complete, the new robotics centre which is targeting completion in 2025, will house up to 25 million of the smaller items that are sold on Amazon Australia, such as jewellery, books and electronics.
Amazon Australia has begun construction on its second Robotics fulfilment centre (FC) located in Craigieburn, north Melbourne. Once complete, the FC will span around 209,000 square metres across four levels – that’s equivalent to 11 Melbourne Cricket Grounds, or five times the size of Federation Square, making it the largest warehouse ever built in Australia - surpassing Amazon’s Western Sydney robotics site by 9,000sqm.
It is expected the construction and fit out of the state-of-the-art facility will create up to an additional 2,000 jobs for the area. Once fully operational, the new site will offer approximately 2,000 jobs for Melbourne locals, with the opportunity to work alongside advanced robotics. Jobs will range from highly skilled roles like IT, HR and engineering, to entry level roles with on-the-job training. The majority of roles will be permanent full-time, offering exciting career opportunities, competitive pay and benefits such as subsidised healthcare and up to 20 weeks paid parental leave. Part-time roles will also be available.
The new fulfilment centre will be equipped with advanced Amazon robotics technology to better assist employees, serve customers, and contribute to the company’s efforts to deliver a seamless experience for its Australian customers.
Amazon Robotics work collaboratively with employees by moving ‘pods’ of inventory to them, reducing the time and effort that would otherwise be required for the employee to stow items for sale or pick them for new customer orders. Here are some fun facts about how Amazon use robotics:
Globally, Amazon has more than 750,000 mobile robots at over 300 facilities.
75% of Amazon customer orders globally are handled in part by robotics.
Amazon has created 700 new categories of jobs since introducing robotics in its fulfillment network.
Amazon launched the Mechatronics and Robotics Apprenticeship Program in 2020 to re-train people in high-demand fields like robotics and software engineering. Globally, employees who have graduated from this free program have learned new skills and seen pay increases by up to 40%.
Excavation works have begun on the site which is being developed by LOGOS. The new site is situated on AustralianSuper owned Craigieburn Logistics Estate, in Craigieburn, north Melbourne.
The Melbourne Robotics fulfilment centre will be Amazon’s sixth operations site in Melbourne, supporting the company’s existing fulfilment and logistics network in Victoria which includes fulfilment centres in Dandenong South and Ravenhall, Amazon’s first Australian standalone sort centre and two Amazon Logistics sites.
