Amazon exceeds its forecasts and will reach a thousand workers in Zaragoza at Christmas

One year after its launch , Amazon ‘s large logistics center in Zaragoza already has 900 workers , 200 more than at its inauguration, and has established itself as one of the most important of the e-commerce giant in Europe . In fact, the company has exceeded its forecasts and expects to exceed a thousand people – a milestone planned for its three years of life – in the last quarter of this same 2024, for the Christmas campaign .

Reaching these thousand workers will be possible with the implementation of the night shift , which will allow the center to operate from Monday to Friday 24 hours a day. Additionally, in the last quarter of 2023, work also began on Saturdays and Sundays to address the spike in traffic due to Black Friday and Christmas, although, as of today, it is only open on Saturday mornings.

The center, Amazon’s only “inbound cross dock ” in our country, facilitates the distribution of products throughout Amazon ‘s entire operations network, thus sending the units to logistics centers throughout Spain and 32 other centers in Europe . to offer better service to Amazon customers . Its maximum capacity is 11.5 million products per week, and, although the company has not updated the data, after six months it was already at 50% of its performance , with about six million units.

The director of the center, César Hernández from Teruel, has no doubt that the implementation of the night shift “will bring more activity and more hiring ,” although he emphasizes that “more activity ” does not mean “more trucks .” Of these 900 workers, almost half , 44%, are women, when the average in the logistics sector is 22%, and there are more than 40 nationalities and 40 different roles . “We had to make history and I couldn’t be happier,” he said.

FOUR MILLION TO OPTIMIZE CARGO SPACE

Following Amazon ‘s firm commitment to Zaragoza, the e-commerce giant , which invested 175 million in the construction of the center , is going to allocate another four million to expand the number of direct truck loading docks , with the aim of reducing the number of vehicles and fill them more. All the merchandise that leaves this center leaves in trucks and is grouped in three different ways, through palletizing robots , manually in boxes; or “in bulk ” without pallets, the latter being the one that will be expanded, going from 15 to 21 docks.

The one in Plaza is a “ cross docking ” center, that is, the gateway for products to the Amazon network in Europe and which supplies other warehouses across the continent, which store them until they have a buyer . . It is, in fact, the only Amazon “ cross dock ” in Spain and one of the seven that exist in Europe , along with two others in the United Kingdom and Germany and others in France and Poland. Another one will open in Italy in September , and its workers are already in Zaragoza training with the challenge of replicating it in this new location.

Thus, from Amazon they trust in the “ promising ” future for the plant, the third facility in the Zaragoza area next to the last mile warehouse – the one that goes direct to the consumer – and the Fresh center of the City of Transportation. “Aragón and Amazon have known how to understand each other. In this symbiotic relationship, that is just the beginning,” said the director of the logistics center.

TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION HUB

This “inbound cross dock” center, unique in Spain, also has technologies that cannot be found in other centers in the country. Establishing synergies with the data centers of El Burgo de Ebro, Villanueva de Gállego and Huesca, it has Amazon Web Services technology to optimize logistics operations . Thus, as soon as a product arrives, a digital “call” is made that will check the inventories of the 33 warehouses with which it is connected to decide its destination.

Another example is “ Amazon Monitron ”, a comprehensive machine monitoring system that uses technology to predict possible failures in industrial equipment. This high- performance system is made up of small sensors installed on the motors, pumps or conveyor belts in Amazon’s logistics centers. Its function is to collect machine operating data and send it to the cloud , where possible anomalies will be detected , alerting engineering staff almost instantly, allowing predictive maintenance on a scale never imagined.

VISIT OF AZCÓN AND CHUECA

On this first anniversary, the president of Aragón , Jorge Azcón , has visited the plant to “ verify ” the “success” of the implementation of Amazon in Zaragoza, with which he leads the transformation of the Community into a “large complete logistics platform ”. “It contributes 5% of the GDP, there are more than 550 companies and thousands of jobs are linked to logistics . It is very positive that Amazon has exceeded in one year the ambitious objectives it already had,” he noted.

The mayor of Zaragoza , Natalia Chueca , also participated in the visit, highlighting the importance of this Amazon logistics center for the growth of the Aragonese capital. “The Fresh center and Amazon Web Services make Amazon inextricably associated with Zaragoza . “It is part of the Zaragoza of the 21st century ,” she added.