Rugeley's Amazon site to close as new centre reopens

The warehouse will use robotic shelving like these to help staff sort millions of items

Amazon's fulfilment centre in Rugeley is to close, with staff being offered jobs at its new £500m site in Sutton Coldfield.

The company said the closure was subject to consultation but staff who did not want to move 20 miles to the new site would be offered other jobs.

The new fulfilment centre will employ 1,400 people at first, rising to more than 2,000 in the next three years.

The 547,000 sq ft site is due to open in October.

The new building, at Peddimore, includes three floors with robots to help select the stored items.

It will focus on storing millions of smaller items which will sit waiting until they are purchased.

Recruitment for a number of roles has begun and jobs will include pickers, engineers, HR, finance and IT specialists and operations managers.

The Peddimore base is one of two new fulfilment centres announced by the company in January, with the other to be created at Stockton-on-Tees, County Durham.

Such centres represent the second step in the firm's selling process - taking goods from vendors which initially arrived at one of its two large centres in Coventry and Doncaster.

The goods are then stored in the fulfilment centres until they are bought and transferred on to sorting and delivery centres.