Amazon center sorting millions of packages in Madison County
More than 1,800 employees at the Amazon fulfillment center at the Madison County Mega Site are working hard to “deliver smiles” all over Mississippi, the United States, and the world.
The facility opened its doors to employees in July 2022 with just 800 employees. Though the facility was in operation for the last Christmas season or “peak,” as the employees call it, it was not at full capacity.
This year will mark the first full peak for the facility.
Divina Mims, a public relations manager with Amazon, said the facility now has the capacity to move upwards of one million orders a day.
According to Mims, more than 60 percent of sales in Amazon’s store are from independent sellers, most of which are small and medium-sized businesses. She said there are more than 7,500 in the state.
In 2022, independent sellers in Mississippi sold more than three million products in Amazon’s store, Mims said. She went on to note that the average annual sales per independent seller was more than $90,000.
The four-floor facility measures about 3 million square feet and features a fleet of 4,700 robots known as Kivas. The facility, designated “Jan 1” in reference to the Jackson-Medgar Wiley Evers International Airport, is the first robotics sortable facility in the state of Mississippi.
The Kivas are blue rectangles that run along the floor of the warehouse sections of the facility on the top three floors. Using bar codes they lift shelves with items just an inch or two off the ground and bring shelves to employee workstations where goods are checked and counted and sorted for packaging. The robots operate on the top three floors of the facility which is largely warehouse space.
Packages will leave this facility and go to another one for shipping.
The structure of the building was largely completed in August 2021.
The Journal first reported in July 2020 that the shipping giant purchased 69.02 acres at the Mega Site west of I-55 on Nissan Parkway off Mississippi 22 near Canton.
In November 2020, the company announced that the facility would bring as many as 1,000 full-time jobs to the state.
Anyone waiting for the jobs to come available can sign up for text notifications by texting CANTON to 77088.