Yahoo Finance Amazon to Unveil 3rd Fulfillment Center in San Bernardino
In a bid to meet the ever increasing demand for online shopping, Amazon.com Inc. AMZN announced its plan to open another fulfillment center in San Bernardino, CA.
The San Bernardino facility, spread across an area of more than 1.1 million square feet, will create 1,000 plus full-time jobs. The new facility will focus more on picking, packing and shipping smaller items, such as books, electronics and toys, to name a few.
The world’s largest online retailer has been strengthening its presence in California. Its first facility was opened in San Bernardino in 2012. This new warehouse will now be the company’s third fulfillment center in the region and seventh in the state. The company also has a sorting facility in San Bernardino. Other fulfillment centers in California are located in Tracy, Patterson, Moreno Valley, Redlands and Rialto. To-date, Amazon has over 12,000 full-time employees in the state and continues to hire more to meet the growing customer demand.
According to Amazon’s vice president of North American operations, Akash Chauhan, “San Bernardino has proven to be an important part of Amazon’s growth in California, and we are proud to continue creating jobs and helping support the economy here in the Inland Empire”.
Amazon stated that it offers better-than-industry-standard salaries, including healthcare and other full-time benefits like health insurance and 401(k) retirement plan. In addition, the retail giant offers bonuses and company stock awards.
Amazon plans to expand its fulfillment centers across the country. In the recent months, the company has been spending heavily to ensure on-time delivery of goods and reduce logistics costs by adding a fleet of cargo trucks and opening smaller distribution centers to handle last-minute deliveries to customers’ doorstep.
Earlier this week, the company announced its plan to open a fulfillment center in Edgerton, spreading across an area of more than 800,000 square feet, which is expected to create 1,000 plus full-time jobs.
Fulfillment centers are giant warehouses that help online retailers to store and ship products, and handle returns quickly. Prompt and accurate delivery is integral to the success of an online retailer.
In our view, Amazon must maintain the U.S. market share while expanding globally to retain the leading position. For this, the company needs to invest more in fulfillment as well as technology and content, especially in the international markets with lesser penetration but higher growth rates. Despite the near-term pressure on the bottom line, these are necessary to maintain its dominance in this highly competitive market in the long run.
Currently, Amazon has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).
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