Amazon Breaks Ground for $750m SEQ Robotic Warehouse

Dirt has turned on Amazon’s $750-million robotics-enabled fulfilment centre in South-East Queensland. The four-level facility at North Maclean is expected to open in 2028 and create more than 1000 operational jobs Another 2000 jobs are expected to be generated during construction and fit-out of the warehouse. The 150,000sq m building will be one of the largest logistics facilities constructed in Queensland—its footprint is roughly equivalent to 18 rugby league fields and almost double the size of Suncorp Stadium. When fully operational the facility is expected to house up to 15 million smaller items sold through Amazon’s Australian marketplace. The centre will have the capacity to process more than 125 million packages annually. ▲ Amazon Australia director of operations Wayne Angus: Growth in Queensland is critically important to us. The facility will use Amazon Robotics technology designed to automate repetitive tasks while employees manage operations requiring human decision-making. Robots in the warehouse will be capable of lifting loads of up to 500kg and will interact with staff through wearable Wi-Fi devices and centralised planning software. Amazon Australia director of operations Wayne Angus told The Urban Developer that the investment reflected the company’s growing confidence in the Queensland market. “Growth in Queensland is critically important to us and Queensland continues to support our national growth,” Angus said. “From a local infrastructure perspective, the investment is testament to our confidence, not only in the local government and the local council, but most importantly, in the customers and our employee base that will be operational here in Queensland.” ▲ A rendering of the warehouse Amazon plans to open in 2028 near Logan in South-East Queensland. While land constraints in South-East Queensland are being considered, it is not slowing Amazon’s growth in the region. “We continue to work with local government in making sure that we have land packages available for our growth,” Angus said. “At the same time, the local approval of this site was expedited in less than seven weeks, which is testament to a strong collaboration between industry and government, and ensuring that the development of Queensland is prioritised for growth out into the future.” Amazon is also looking ahead to what the 2032 Olympics may mean for Queensland growth. “The confidence that we have, for not only the period of the Olympics, but post the Olympics, is very strong,” Angus said. “At the same time, as we [deliver] Queensland’s biggest warehouse ever built, it is going to put some pressure on our ability to ensure that the contractors that we have ... are available and ready to build. “[But] we wouldn’t be investing this amount of money in Logan if we weren’t confident in the government, in the local councils, in the local customer base, and ensuring that we’ve got the contractual obligations in place to make make this a success.” The site is in Charter Hall’s Flagstone Logistics Estate on a 10ha parcel with direct access to the Mount Lindesay Highway. The project will become Amazon’s second fulfilment centre in Queensland and is planned to support the company’s existing fulfilment centre at Lytton in Brisbane as well as logistics sites at Heathwood and Arundel on the Gold Coast. Across Australia, Amazon has steadily rolled out robotic fulfilment centres as it expands its delivery network. One of the first was a large robotics fulfilment centre at Moorebank in Sydney’s south-west opened in 2021. “We launched in Australia eight-and-a-half years ago with a single building. We now have eight ... across the network and will expand upon that network,” Angus said. “We have seen year-on-year growth as our selection is increased and the availability of our product portfolio to our customers increases, as well as increasing the speed to which we deliver to our customers, and that gives us great confidence that the future is bright—and we will continue to invest in Australia.” The company followed the Moorebank facility with another robotics-enabled fulfilment centre at Kemps Creek in western Sydney opened in 2022, while a major robotic fulfilment centre opened at Craigieburn in Melbourne’s north in 2022. Amazon has also developed a large robotics facility at Ravenhall in Melbourne’s west, which began operations earlier as part of the company’s first wave of Australian automation. In Western Australia, the company opened a robotic fulfilment centre in Jandakot near Perth in 2023. The new Logan project is Amazon’s first robotics fulfilment centre in Queensland and signals a further push into the fast-growing south-east Queensland logistics market. Globally, the company has deployed more than 300 robotics-enabled fulfilment centres as part of its automated distribution network.

Amazon Breaks Ground for $750m SEQ Robotic Warehouse

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