Amazon Adds 3 MSF to Industrial Footprint

Amazon fulfillment center. Image courtesy of Amazon

Amazon continues to expand its delivery system with new facilities across the U.S. The e-commerce giant just announced five projects involving openings and plans for fulfillment and sortation centers totaling more than 3.3 million square feet in Minnesota and Alabama.

“Last quarter, we discussed the physical capacity we were adding to meet customer demand. We made strong progress in the third quarter to build and open new facilities, and as a result, for the first time since the pandemic began, we are no longer capacity-constrained for physical space in the network,” Brian Olsavsky, CFO of Amazon.com Inc., said during the company’s third quarter earnings conference call on Oct. 28.

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Just outside of Minneapolis in Maple Grove, Minn., Amazon opened a new sortation center at 10440 89th Ave. Amazon leased the 297,000-square-foot building from Scannell Properties. The company has had a presence in Minnesota since 2010.

In Alabama, Amazon is a relatively new business, having made its entrée into the state with the start of its first operations in 2020. However, the global e-commerce leader is quickly making up for lost time, having just announced plans for three new operations facilities and the recent opening of a fulfillment center.

In Birmingham, Amazon will open a new delivery station in November. The bigger developments will come in 2022, when the company will debut a 1 million-square-foot, XL non-sortable fulfillment center in Huntsville, and a 650,000-square-foot, inbound cross-dock receive center in Montgomery. And the company has already celebrated the opening of a non-sortable fulfillment center in Huntsville. The facility utilizes innovative technologies and spans 1 million square feet.

Pandemic-era growth spurt

While many businesses faced immense challenges amid the COVID-19 health crisis, others flourished, and Amazon and other e-commerce businesses were among them. And by association, the logistics industry has thrived as well. Amazon is benefitting at both ends.

“For the year, we expect our 2021 footprint additions to exceed last year’s build-out, which was also significant. To put this in perspective, we are on track to double our fulfillment network over the two-year period since the pandemic’s early days,” Olsavsky added during the earnings call.