New facility will be located next to existing Amazon Fulfillment Center
OKCTalk was first to report Amazon's Sortation Facility at SW 15th and Council in early 2017. In April of 2018, we also broke the news on their 2.5 million square foot Fulfillment Center near Will Rogers Airport which opened in 2019.
The latest facility will be immediately north of the current fulfillment center and will be a 'non-sort facility', one that handles large items bought through their website.
Similar Amazon warehouses of this type employ approximately 1,200 workers.
Plans call for a 2-level building along with over 1,000 parking spaces for employees and docks and storage for hundreds of trucks.
Non-sort facilities typically stock and ship items such as kayaks, kegorators, grills and all types of bulky products available for purchase on-line.
Amazon warehouses that stock smaller-sized objects rely heavily on small robots, which travel long distances in their multi-floor facilities and retrieve racks to workers who then retrieve items for boxing and shipping to the end customer.
Due to the size and weight of the objects in non-sort facilities, they rely heavily on Powered Industrial Equipment (P.I.T.) which are custom machines resembling traditional fork-lifts.
P.I.T. equipment in use
In similar Amazon facilities in other cities, after an item is retrieved it moves via conveyor belt to a massive custom boxing operation. Machines run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to create right-sized containers from huge sheets of cardboard.
Amazon boxing machine
Most items sent from the non-sort facility involve a pre-arranged scheduled delivery.
The Covid-19 pandemic has driven more consumers to buy products through the Internet and Amazon continues to grow. The world's largest retailer is expected to far outpace the $280 billion in revenue of 2019.
Oklahoma City provided Amazon $1.7 million in public incentives for the investment in the fulfillment center and the creation of approximately 1,800 jobs. Given that Amazon aggressively pursues incentives, expect a similar request for this latest project.
Rendering of proposed OKC facility