Amazon has opened its Irish fulfilment centre at Baldonnell Business Park on the outskirts of Dublin, enabling the online shopping giant to offer delivery seven days a week and one-day delivery to Irish customers.
The company will employ 500 at the 630,000 sq ft warehouse, which will hold millions of items to be packed and shipped to customers in Ireland and across Europe. Amazon already had two delivery stations in Rathcoole and Ballycoolin.
Darragh Kelly, general manager at the fulfilment centre in Dublin, said, “as a proud Irishman, it’s an honour to lead the opening of our first ever fulfilment centre on the island of Ireland. Our new fulfilment centre will provide customers across Ireland with faster delivery times while creating hundreds of roles across a wide range of disciplines including engineering, HR, IT, health & safety, finance and operations management. It’s an exciting time to be a part of the Amazon team in Dublin and I’m looking forward to the weeks and months ahead as we grow our team and deliver for our customers.”
The first order fulfilled at the centre was a laptop stand and a connector for a computer monitor. The items were picked and packed at the site before being sent to Rathcoole for delivery by a contractor from Jetline Logistics Ltd to the home of Alex Dobinson in south Dublin.
The Dublin fulfilment centre is 100% electric and will operate without fossil fuel combustibles. Its heating, ventilation and air conditioning are controlled by a building management system, and LED lighting adjusts according to natural light availability and building occupancy.
Indoor air quality is also monitored, and employees will have access to electric vehicle charging and bicycle storage.
Amazon opened its first office in Ireland in September 2004 before opening a customer service centre in Cork two years later and an Amazon Web Services site in November 2007.
The company estimates that AWS now supports 8,700 jobs directly and indirectly and generates economic output of €1.45bn per year in Ireland.
Source: Business Plus
