Amazon to add 800 jobs in Catalonia

Barcelona (CNA).- The North American multinational Amazon has announced the hiring of 800 workers in order to incorporate their Amazon Robotics cutting edge technology at the logistic centers of Castellbisbal and Prat de Llobregat, just outside Barcelona. These 800 jobs are in addition to the 1,500 hirings that they had already announced would take place over the next three years. 200 of these new positions will be in Castellbisbal, where the new technology is already in use, and the other 600 will start at the new logistics center in Prat, which is opening in October, 2017. In addition, Amazon is contracting highly qualified engineers for the maintenance of the whole system at the two centers.

Amazon's implementation of this new technology at its logistics center in Castellbisbal is its first in Spain. The center opened last October and specializes in Amazon Pantry orders. When the technology is implemented in El Prat de Llobregat as well this fall, Amazon Robotics will be working in twenty Amazon logistics centers across the United States, England, Poland, and Catalonia.

According to the Amazon Spain Fulfillment general manager, Fred Pattje, the robots will make the employees’ job easier in order to improve customer service. The Amazon robots slide underneath and move the storage shelves by themselves. In this way, the number of stored items per square meter can increase by 50%, which will accelerate order preparations and give customers the benefit of a wider range of products, thanks to the additional storage space.

In contrast with Amazon’s logistic centers in San Fernando de Henares, in Madrid, in which employees have to go to the storage shelves to prepare the orders, at the centers with the Amazon Robotics technology, the shelves will come to the employee, which will save them around six to seven kilometers in trips.

Despite using the same technology, the Robots’ and the shelves’ quantity and capacity will be adapted to each center. In this way, 350 robots will operate the 2,000 storage shelves in Castellbisbal and 3,500 robots will handle the 50,000 storage shelves in Prat. Pattje said that, for now, this new technology will not be implemented in any other Amazon logistics center in Spain.

The new hirings announced this Wednesday are in addition to the 1,500 jobs forecast for the logistics center in Prat de Llobregat and the 650 at the new logistics center in Martorelles, over the next three years. Furthermore, 500 more jobs will be added in Barcelona from now until 2019 with the opening of the ‘Seller Support Hub’, which is going to help thousands of small French, Italian, and Spanish companies sell their products through Amazon Marketplace.