Business boomed over the holidays at the Amazon Fulfillment Center in Kent.
Employees shipped more than one million items in a single day from the 800,000-square-foot-facility near South 212th Street and 59th Place South, according to company officials.
The Kent site, which opened in March, joined two fulfillment centers in Poland and one in San Marcos, Texas in breaking the one million items shipped mark.
“This truly was a massive team effort, and the results speak for themselves,” said Mike Roth, vice president of Global Customer Fulfillment, in a company blog. “Almost every fulfillment center, sortation center or specialty site showed year-over-year improvement. Some broke network records. And some even broke multiple records in a span of days.”
Kent’s center employs about 3,500 full-time associates. Seattle-based Amazon employs more than 5,000 full-time employees at its fulfillment centers in Western Washington, with other locations in DuPont, Sumner and Bellevue.
A direct hire warehouse associate receives pay of $13.75 to $14.75 per hour, according to a recent Amazon job posting for the Kent site. Amazon also offers health care benefits and a 401 (k) with company match.
In the last two years, Amazon launched operations at more than a dozen new facilities, many of which house robotic technology, including Kent. There are more than 45,000 robots being used in 20-plus fulfillment centers worldwide.
Amazon has a workforce of 200,000-plus hourly associates – a mix of permanent and seasonal – that made the record-breaking holiday peak season happen.
“We shipped out more packages to customers this holiday shopping season than we ever have before – more than one billion items shipped worldwide with Prime and Fulfillment by Amazon,” Roth said.
Prime Now is available in more than 40 cities, including Seattle, across seven countries. Prime Now features same-day delivery for orders of more than $35. Amazon provides delivery by 9 p.m. for orders before noon seven days a week.
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