An artist’s impression of Amazon Australia’s Melbourne fulfilment centre at Ravenhall.
Retail behemoth Amazon will open one of its signature new fulfilment centres in the western suburbs of Melbourne, committing to a Dexus logistics park, as it seeks to lock in gains it made during the pandemic.
The company is readying for a sales surge at the forthcoming annual Black Friday event and is capitalising on the switch to online shopping during lockdowns. Just last week it also committed to a last mile delivery centre in Brisbane and will also occupy a roboticised warehouse in the Sydney suburb of Oakdale.
Amazon said the new facility, now under way in the Melbourne suburb of Ravenhall, would create about 300 jobs when completed next year. The new complex would generate an additional 200 construction jobs and more than double Amazon’s operational footprint in Victoria.
The new fulfilment centre will be 37,000sq m — almost double the size of the Melbourne Cricket Ground — with capacity to house up to six million items from Amazon.com.au ranging from health, household and personal care products, consumer electronics, as well as pantry food and drink staples, to larger items such as flat-screen TVs.
Amazon opened its first local fulfilment centre in Dandenong South in Melbourne’s southeast in 2017 and also recently opened a larger last-mile hub at Melbourne airport.
“We have invested significantly in our Victorian operations this year to ensure we can continue to improve delivery promises to customers in the state,” Amazon Australia director of operations Craig Fuller said. The complex will also service small and medium-sized businesses that use the Fulfilment By Amazon service.
Amazon worked with Dexus to secure the strategic location at the Horizon 3023 estate, a 127ha site in a west Melbourne industrial precinct. Dexus has also won a swag of other tenants, with the Amazon lease facilitated by CBRE.
“We are pleased to be able to support Amazon’s growth in Australia,” Dexus chief investment officer Ross Du Vernet said. “The public transport and high-quality amenity in the precinct are appealing to customers who are focused on their employees.”
Online sales are lifting across the country, partly due to the pandemic and also because of a shift to online convenience shopping.
Last month 47 per cent of online shoppers in Australia reported purchasing from Amazon, up from 30 per cent the same time a year ago, according to a survey by e-commerce specialist Pattern.
About a third of Amazon shoppers cited lockdowns as a factor in their decision to purchase from the site, the survey found.
Also in September, Myer struck a deal with Amazon that will turn its click-and-collect counters into Amazon post offices. The agreement means shoppers making purchases on Amazon can choose the option of having the package delivered to a Myer store for collection.
Amazon’s recent Prime Day event delivered big sales for small businesses in mid-October with computers, electronics, home and beauty emerging as the best-selling categories. Zenify, Checkered Choice and Arovec recorded some of the biggest sales in terms of units sold.
The range of goods that proved popular included lighting, skin care, laundry products and confectionary. Prime members stocked up on soft drinks and paper towels as well as frying pans and vacuum cleaners.
