Take a look inside Amazon’s fulfilment centre near Upper James
Hamilton is now home to what Amazon Canada is calling its most technologically advanced" robotic fulfilment centre in the country.
Tuesday marked the grand opening of the Mount Hope facility, which began welcoming employees at the end of January - more than a year and a half after Amazon announced it had chosen Steeltown for its expansion in the province.
As of this week, there are at least 1,500 full-time employees at the fulfilment centre, but at peak holiday season the workforce can expand to nearly 4,000, the company said.
The fulfilment centre was initially expected to open in 2021, but construction delays pushed that back by several months.
However, whirring sounds of machines filled the more-than-800,000-square-foot warehouse on Aeropark Boulevard, located near Upper James Street and Dickenson Road West, Tuesday morning.
To put its size into perspective, it's about one and a half times the size of the Rogers Centre.
Around the building, there were bundles of cardboard boxes and hay-bale-sized rolls of packaging materials all awaiting their turn to be filled with orders made through the Seattle-based e-commerce giant.
Above your head, thousands of yellow totes filled with different items made their way across the centre on speedy conveyor belts.
Speaking at the event, Vibhore Arora, regional director of customer fulfilment in Canada, said the facility is the first in the country to have a robotic palletizer arm, which organizes the bright yellow plastic bins onto pallets before they leave the facility.
It's just one of more than 3,600 robots that help with fulfilling orders and transshipment, which is the process of moving items to other fulfilment centres, according to the company.
Ben Sibbing, an operations manager at the centre, said the palletizer arm stacks approximately 400 totes an hour - but its purpose extends beyond efficiency.
At other facilities, Sibbing said the manual stacking of totes for shipment comes with ergonomic concerns" for workers, with the potential to cause strains, sprains and ... injuries."
It makes it a lot safer for our team," said Sibbing.
Arora echoed that sentiment, noting that other robots across the warehouse help employees be more productive, while also creating a safer work environment as they bring products directly to associates for them to be packed as they are ordered.
Together, our associates and robots (in Hamilton) help to ship approximately 650,000 units to Canadians daily," he said, calling the facility most technologically advanced" warehouse in the country.
Hamilton's facility specializes in the fulfilment of orders of millions of smaller items stocked by Amazon, according to the company.
That includes anything from laundry detergent pods, cat food and memory-foam pillows to bird feeders, books and bartender kits.
The Hamilton warehouse, known as YHM1, is also one of four centres that Amazon plans on opening in Ontario this year and next, which are expected to create a total of 4,500 new jobs across the province.
Speaking at the opening event, Flamborough-Glanbrook MPP Donna Skelly applauded the company's presence in the city and the jobs it will draw to the region.
Amazon offers great wages, great benefits and a flexible work environment," said Skelly. It's something I haven't seen in other workforces."
However, Amazon has recently come under fire as warehouse workers in the United States have walked out of facilities in protest to demand higher wages and better working conditions.
A company spokesperson said the facility in Hamilton is still hiring and applicants can apply online.
Fallon Hewitt is a reporter at The Spectator. fhewitt@thespec.com