For 2000 employees

Amazon.de opens huge new logistics center

Amazon employs almost 40,000 people in Germany.

(Bild: APA/dpa)

The US online mail order company Amazon is opening a new logistics center in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW). Around 400 people are initially employed in the town of Horn-Bad Meinberg; by the end of the year, a total of almost 2,000 people are to be employed, with the prospect of even more, as the company told the German Press Agency (dpa).

According to Amazon, the logistics center will primarily store small and medium-sized items such as books, DVDs, tablets, chargers, shoes and stuffed animals. "Everything from the size of an earring to a filter coffee machine," said a spokesperson. The building, which is larger than seven soccer pitches, has space for more than 20 million items.

As in some other logistics centers, hundreds of transport robots are used in Horn-Bad Meinberg to bring mobile shelves with the goods to the employees in the goods-in and goods-out areas. According to the Amazon spokesperson, this eliminates walking distances.

NRW Minister President Hendrik Wüst said on the occasion of the opening: "North Rhine-Westphalia is an infrastructural and economic hub in the heart of Europe and connects logistics networks across the entire continent. The new Amazon logistics center in Horn-Bad Meinberg underlines once again that we have excellent location conditions. The world is investing in North Rhine-Westphalia."

Almost 40,000 employees at Amazon Germany
According to its own figures, Amazon employs around 38,500 permanent staff in Germany, a third of whom are based in NRW. The company has more than 100 locations across Germany, including 22 logistics centers. Six are located in NRW. In addition to Horn-Bad Meinberg, there are others in Dortmund, Mönchengladbach, Oelde, Rheinberg and Werne. The online mail order company also operates 14 distribution centers, two sorting centers and one development center. Most recently, a sorting center in Dormagen was closed.

Germany is an important market for Amazon. The company is by far the largest online retailer in the country. According to the HDE Monitor, the marketplaces and the Group's own retail operations account for around 60 percent of all online retail in the country. In June, Amazon announced its intention to invest a further 10 billion euros in Germany.