Amazon adds more fulfillment

 BY ALLISON ENRIGHT Editor

Less than a month into the New Year and the e-retailer and marketplace announces plans for three additional U.S. fulfillment centers.

Amazon.com Inc. continues to build out its U.S. fulfillment center network. The largest e-retailer in North America, fresh off its announcement that it will add 100,000 full-time employee by mid-2018, this week said it has two new fulfillment centers in the works. It announced a third earlier this month.

Amazon, No. 1 in the 2016 Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, will build a 1.2 million square-foot facility in North East, Md., which will employ 700. North East is about an hour from Philadelphia and Baltimore along Interstate 95. Amazon already operates a fulfillment center in Baltimore and facilities in the Philadelphia metro area.

Amazon also will build a 1 million square-foot facility in Coppell, Texas, a Dallas suburb and the third facility Amazon will operate in the area. The first opened in 2013, and the second in the fourth quarter of 2016. Amazon is currently building a fulfillment center in Houston. That and the new Coppell facility will be Amazon’s eighth and ninth Texas fulfillment centers. It also operates a handful of smaller sortation facilities in the state.

Earlier this month, it announced a 1 million square-foot facility in Jacksonville, Fla., that will eventually employ 1,000 full-time workers. It will be Amazon’s second facility in Jacksonville.

Amazon added 26 fulfillment centers in 2016, according to Brian Olsavsky, Amazon’s chief financial officer. The e-retailer is aggressively building out its fulfillment network in response to increased demand for warehouse and fulfillment services as part of Fulfillment By Amazon. Amazon says the number of Amazon sellers worldwide using FBA grew more than 70% in 2016.