US-based e-commerce and logistics giant Amazon has opened a new £500m (€591m) fulfilment centre in Northampton and announced a second £500m (€591m) facility in nearby Kettering, bringing its total investment in Northamptonshire to more than £1bn (€1.18bn) and creating over 4,000 jobs across both sites.

According to Parcel and Postal Technology International, the Northampton facility is described as one of the most advanced logistics operations in the UK, storing tens of millions of items across three floors where thousands of Hercules robots retrieve products and deliver them directly to employees. More than 2,000 jobs are being created at the site.

John Boumphrey, Amazon UK and Ireland country manager, said: "A year ago we said we planned to invest £40bn in the UK. Today you can see what that means; from 4,000 jobs in Northamptonshire and 2,000 in Hull, to drone deliveries from Darlington and a new tech HQ in Swansea. We said we'd deliver and we have. And we're only a year in."

The Kettering facility, also a £500m (€591m) investment, will be the UK's largest cross-dock facility when it opens this autumn. The 83,600m² site will process around 20 million items per week and create more than 2,000 permanent jobs alongside hundreds of seasonal roles, with recruitment already underway across engineering, HR, IT, finance and operations functions.

Gareth Davies, Amazon UK regional director, said: "With another £500m facility on the horizon, this is an incredibly exciting time for our teams and the wider community."

The Northamptonshire openings form part of Amazon's broader £40bn (€47.2bn) UK investment plan spanning 2025 to 2027, described as the largest in the company's history outside the United States, with more than £15bn (€17.7bn) already delivered. Over the past year, Amazon has delivered more than 1.6 billion items same day or next day in the UK, begun rolling out more than 160 electric heavy goods vehicles, and launched drone deliveries from its Darlington fulfilment centre.

Find out more about Amazon's Northamptonshire fulfilment investment and UK logistics expansion in the complete article.