One year into its £40b UK investment, Amazon has opened a new fulfilment centre in Northampton, announced the UK's largest cross-dock facility in Kettering, and expanded its London campus in Shoreditch.
Amazon says that in the past year it has delivered more than 1.6 billion items the same or next day, launched drone deliveries, and started rolling out the largest electric truck fleet in its global network.
The developments came one year after Amazon announced plans to invest £40b in the UK from 2025-27 – the largest investment in the company's history outside the US, with more than £15b already delivered – spanning new fulfilment centres, a tech HQ in Swansea, and more.
Amazon has also announced plans for a second major site in nearby Kettering, taking its investment in a single county to more than £1b and creating more than 4,000 jobs. The Kettering site will be the UK's largest cross-dock facility, sorting and routing goods across the country. The Northampton centre is one of the most advanced logistics operations in the UK, with thousands of robots working alongside employees across three floors.
The planned investment over three years will create thousands of full-time jobs, four new fulfilment centres, and two new London office buildings.
John Boumphrey, Amazon UK country manager, says: "A year ago we said we planned to invest £40b in the UK. Today, you can see what that means – from 4,000 jobs in Northamptonshire and 2,000 in Hull, to drone deliveries from Darlington and a new tech HQ in Swansea. We said we'd deliver and we have. And we're only a year in."
The £500m operational facility in Kettering will open this autumn. The 900,000 sqft site is set to process around 20 million items each week, creating more than 2,000 permanent jobs and hundreds of seasonal roles.
In Northampton, the new £500m fulfilment centre will see more than 2,000 jobs created. One of the most advanced logistics operations in the UK, the Northampton site stores tens of millions of items across three floors of robotics, where thousands of Hercules robots retrieve products and bring them directly to employees.
Amazon has also expanded its London headquarters in Shoreditch, Hackney, with the opening of a third building. The campus now accommodates around 6,000 employees working on products and technology for Amazon, with more than 140 collaboration spaces.
