Amazon warehouse officially open
The new Amazon fulfillment center at the Madison County Mega Site is open for business following a ribbon cutting last week that featured local and state officials.
Supervisor Paul Griffin spoke at the ribbon cutting that included Gov. Tate Reeves, Lt. Governor Delbert Hosemann, Madison County Economic Development Director Joey Deason as well as Supervisors Karl Banks and Gerald Steen.
Griffin said that about 18 years ago when the Mega Site was still a “pine thicket”, the board wanted to recruit a “big fish” to the county.
Griffin said developing “a workforce that is second to none” is what brought Amazon to Madison County.
“Amazon took the bait, they took the hook, the line and sinker,” Griffin said.
Divina Mims, a public relations manager with Amazon, said 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 work stations 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.
Mims said watching them zoom around and move shelves is “like ballet.” She said robotic technology is a “relatively new” feature for the company and said that it still requires “manpower to work smoothly.”
Packages will leave this facility and go to another one for shipping.
Mims said the facility is still only about three-fourths open as they continue to hire more people and bring all the functions online.
The facility opened its doors on July 24 and currently employs 800 employees.
Isaiah Flannigan, general manager and Site Leader, said the facility hopes to hire as many as 1,500 employees.
Gov. Reeves said that Amazon has made a roughly $600 million investment in the state. This is Amazon’s fourth facility in the state.
Reeves said he is proud of the jobs this facility represents. He said they are “really good jobs” with “great benefits.”
Benefits are said to include competitive pay, paid parental leave, retirement plans, flexible scheduling and tuition assistance after 90 days of employment.
“In the old days, we used to have a lot of people out looking for jobs,” Reeves said. “Today, we have jobs out looking for people.”
Reeves said the facility would be a benefit to the roughly 7,500 small businesses that use the shipping giant to send products to their customers
The structure of the building was largely completed in August of 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.
“The fact that Amazon has chosen to invest in Mississippi again is a testament to the unmatched work ethic and dedication Mississippians exhibit each day," said Reeves following the announcement. "We are well-positioned to be a leader in logistics, and I want to thank the leadership in Madison County and at Amazon for bringing more than 1,000 jobs to the area.”
Anyone waiting for the jobs to come available can sign up for text notifications by texting CANTON to 77088.