News

Jul 03, 2023

Amazon offers glimpse inside its Perth Airport precinct distribution hub

Work Hard. Have Fun. Make History. These words greet employees as they enter the

Work Hard. Have Fun. Make History. These words greet employees as they enter the cavernous warehouse of online retail behemoth Amazon.

Amazon's fulfilment centre in the Perth Airport precinct is the belly of the beast where workers pick, pack and ship products from your online shopping cart to your door.

It stretches more than 9500sqm and can store up to 750,000 products, tripling its operations in the first 12 months alone.

For the first time since it opened more than a year ago, Community News was offered a glimpse inside the centre.

Security is tight at the facility, where we were told it is a condition of entry to sign a non-disclosure agreement, and give our day and month of birth.

Perhaps unsurprising given the stories that have surfaced of the high pressure working conditions for Amazonians. That they are constantly timed and monitored. That they must work at Amazon pace: not a walk, not quite a jog.

The Perth centre is one of four in Australia and one of 185 around the world occupying more than 14 million square metres of space.

And it's proved a profitable business, with founder Jeff Bezos listed as the richest person on the planet with a net worth of $187 billion.

On the warehouse floor, there is a sea of shelves stretching the length of the 9500sqm warehouse which can store up to 750,000 products.

Some of the best-selling items are cat litter, video games, books, Coca Cola, nappies and, unsurprisingly, toilet paper.

The ding of bike bells echo through the warehouse as dozens of staff push their trolleys through the maze of aisles, picking objects off shelves and packing them in boxes.

It's a reminder that while Amazon is a sophisticated online retailer, it still relies heavily on manual labour.

The shelves are stacked with a seemingly random assortment of goods: lightsaber chopsticks next to a copy of The Handmaid's Tale, a tortilla rug next to a tongue scraper.

It seems counter-intuitive to how warehouses are traditionally run, storing books with books and beauty products with similar items.

Amazon site leader Max Wheeler said the magic was in the algorithms, which determine where items should be stored, picked and packed so Amazonians can pick and pack efficiently.

"We have software that uses algorithms to determine the shortest, most efficient walking route for team members who are picking customer orders," he said.

He said since opening, the company had been increasingly expanding its operations in Perth to provide better and faster service for local customers.

It recently launched Fulfilment by Amazon, which Mr Wheeler said is helping dozens of WA-based sellers by allowing them to ship their stock to the fulfilment centre and let Amazon's extensive operations and logistics network do the rest.

"We are always expanding," he said.

"Since we opened, we have tripled our operations and we expect we will double again in the next year."