Amazon announces a new delivery station in Alicante, Spain

Madrid – March 5, 2020 – Amazon announced it will open a new Delivery Station in Alicante, Spain. The over 8,000 square meter building is expected to be fully operational in summer this year, and will serve customers in the city and the surrounding areas. The delivery station will create more than 60 full and part-time, permanent jobs in addition to more than 300 opportunities for third-party drivers as Amazon’s Delivery Service Partners. In this case, Amazon will work with five local delivery companies to help them boost their businesses while creating hundreds of job opportunities.

Delivery stations power the last mile of Amazon’s order process and help speed up deliveries for customers. Packages are shipped to a Delivery Station from neighboring Amazon Fulfillment and Sortation Centers, loaded into delivery vehicles and delivered to customers.

“We are excited to continue to invest in the Valencia region with a new delivery station in Alicante, where we will provide efficient delivery for customers, and contribute to the creation of hundreds of job with our delivery partners”, mentioned Paolo Patrone, Director of Amazon Logistics in Spain.

The Mayor of Alicante, Luis Barcala, welcomed the new Amazon Delivery Station into the city and highlighted the creation of over 400 direct and indirect jobs. “Amazon is installed with a large center in the APD22 area and it’s the first company that takes advantage of the priority processing of licenses enabled by the Alicante City Council to favor the implementation in our city of companies that drive the creation of a significant number of jobs. This facility will serve to distribute clients’ orders throughout the region of Alicante, as well as across neighboring municipalities”, affirmed the Mayor. Barcala also offered Amazon the intermediation of the Local Development Agency for the hiring of workers and asked that local SMEs in the city be counted on to sell products in Amazon.es.

There are more than 9,000 SMEs based in Spain that sell on Amazon. In 2019, these SMEs exceeded 450 million euros in exports, which is an increase compared to 400 million euros the previous year. Only in the Valencia region, there are more than 1,000 SMEs selling on Amazon, being the third Spanish region with more SMEs that sell on Amazon, and exporting more than 75 million euros in 2019.

Amazon is also supporting entrepreneurs to build their own business becoming Delivery Service Partners and help delivering to customers while creating hundreds of job opportunities for local drivers.

The roof and siding of the new site of Amazon in Alicante were made using high quality materials designed for optimum isolation and energy efficiency. In addition, 500sqm of photo-voltaic solar panels will be installed on the rooftop producing 100 kWp of electricity, and the building will extensively use LED lighting. Moreover, a significant amount of windows and skylights will provide a good amount of natural lighting smoothly balanced, where needed, by the artificial lighting. Finally, each of Amazon’s new delivery stations is designed to meet the needs of allocating future electric delivery vehicles. Ranging from the physical layout to the electrical design, we are optimizing these spaces to offer flexibility and scale as we move closer toward putting electric delivery vehicles on the road in the future.

This site will be the company’s second delivery station in the region, joining Amazon delivery station in Paterna.

"Bryan Bravo, sortation associate at this site, highlighted his positive experience: “I’ve been working at Amazon delivery station in Paterna for more than 2 years and I couldn’t be happier. Since day one, you can feel the great atmosphere and the team spirit at the center, working alongside with young people who is as excited as you are and always helping each other. For those interested in applying for a job at Amazon’s new site in Alicante, I would tell them to follow their heart. In my case, I started as temporary, but soon I became permanent, getting to learn from other teams and working on new roles when possible. Working at Amazon has allowed me to grow both, professionally and personally”.

Amazon is a great place to work with highly competitive pay, training programs and industry-leading benefits from day one for its workers. Among some of these benefits is the Career Choice program, through which the company supports employees in accessing adult training in their field of choice, financing 95% of tuition and associated fees up to an amount of €8,000 over four years.

Indeed, Amazon has been recognized with the Top Employer 2021 certification, which validates the quality of the work environment and human resources programs offered to Amazon employees in Spain. The Top Employer certification highlights Amazon’s initiatives to enable employees to start and develop their careers in a fulfilling work environment. More info here.

The company prioritize the safety and health of employees above all else, and so Amazon committed $11.5 billion in 2020 on COVID-related initiatives to help keep its employees globally safe and to get items to customers. This includes an investment of over $1.2 billion on measures like temperature checks, masks, gloves, enhanced cleaning and sanitation, testing in some countries and more.

Only in Spain, since the beginning of the pandemic Amazon has purchased more than 6 million pairs of gloves, over 3 million of facemasks, over 16 million units of disinfectant wipes and half a million bottles of hands disinfectant.

Amazon’s Operations network in Spain started with the San Fernando de Henares (Madrid) Fulfilment Center, which started operations in 2012 – a year after the launch of Amazon.es. Over the last eight years, the company has opened Fulfilment Centers in El Prat (Barcelona), Martorelles (Barcelona), Castellbisbal (Barcelona), Illescas (Toledo), Dos Hermanas (Seville) and Alcalá de Henares (Madrid). In addition, Amazon also has three urban fulfillment centers in Madrid and Barcelona, ​​which provide fast deliveries to its Prime customers in these cities through the Prime Now service. In addition, the company has two Sortation Centers, located in Getafe (Madrid) and Barberá del Vallés (Barcelona), and fifteen Delivery Stations located throughout the country to strengthen their delivery services for the benefit of customers and sellers.

Amazon has invested 2.9 billion euros between 2011 and 2018 in its Spanish infrastructure, shipments, salaries and benefits for employees, among others. In 2020 alone, Amazon created more than 5,000 jobs, increasing its workforce to 12,000 permanent employees in Spain. In addition to these permanent jobs, Amazon hired 7,000 people to support its Operations across the country during the last Christmas season.

Finally, a research requested by Amazon to the Strategy and Economics Consultancy Keystone, estimates that Amazon supply chain, including for example, Construction, Real Estate and other professional services, generated 82,000 additional jobs by the end 2019.