Despite announcing putting future expansion plans on hold, Amazon has officially inaugurated its new logistics centre in the municipality of Onda (Castellón), which will generate 500 permanent jobs, as reported by the company in a statement.
Accompanied by the president of the Generalitat Valenciana, Ximo Puig, and the mayor of Onda, Carmina Ballester, Fred Pattje, director of Amazon Customer Fulfilment in France, Italy and Spain, presented the centre and toured the facilities.
Built on a plot of more than 58,000 square metres -equivalent to eight football fields-, and with more than 130,000 square metres dedicated to storage, this logistics centre will support Amazon’s first mile operations in Spain, and will be used to store and handle up to four million units of large products.
As explained by Fred Pattje, they are “delighted” to open this new logistics centre in Onda, in a region that, he said, has become a strategic point for their operations in Spain. “In addition, we are especially proud of creating jobs with industry-leading benefits such as private health insurance and a pension plan, career development opportunities and a safe work environment for all,” he added.
In this regard, he pointed out that Amazon offers all kinds of jobs for all kinds of people, from those who start their career to those who have a doctorate; from those who have just graduated to people with decades of experience.
The new Onda logistics centre has dozens of different roles, including engineers, operations managers, financial analysts, warehouse workers, technological profiles or specialists in human resources and health and safety.
Amazon has a long relationship with the Valencian Community, since the opening in 2017 of the company’s first logistics station in Paterna. Since then, the company has opened two more logistics stations, in Alicante and Picassent, as well as an Amazon Fresh centre in Valencia.
As Fred Pattje has underlined, in the Valencian Community there are 1,500 SMEs that sell on the Amazon platform, exceeding 100 million euro in international sales in 2020.
In addition, he has indicated that in the last two years Amazon has created an average of more than 100 permanent jobs a week throughout the country and, “following current growth forecasts, Amazon will be in the top 10 of private companies with the largest number of employees in Spain”.
