Amazon opens first robotics sortable center in Mississippi in Madison County

MADISON CO., Miss. (WLBT) - Amazon’s Madison County site is up and running. Around 800 folks are already working but they’re still hiring.

A big takeaway? No packages leaving the Madison County site will be coming straight to your doorstep. But they will leave here with the label that has your name and address.

“I want to welcome you all to JAN1, the first Amazon robotics facility in the state of Mississippi,” said Isaiah Flanagan, General Manager, and Site Lead.

They call it a robotics sortable center. Businesses sign up to have items shipped and processed through Amazon. And this will now be one of the potential first stops in the process of the product’s journey to you.

“It’s about a million square feet on the ground, about 3 million square feet total,” noted Flanagan. “So definitely a large facility. It’s four stories high. We have 70,000 storage pods which hold about 25 million units. So like you’re talking about these shipment times should be speeding up, which is good news for us. Good news for you.”

But only smaller household items like dog food, toys, books, and things like that will move through the facility. Things that can fit in small yellow bins. Now, to the robotics piece. They have what is called Kivas, think a glorified Roomba that operates like a forklift. Between 1,300 and 1,500 people will eventually be employed at the facility alongside 4,700 of these robots.

“There’s an awful lot of technology inside this facility,” described Governor Tate Reeves. “And the reason that these individuals are getting paid above average wages and great benefits is that you have to have a skill set to operate this and we’re training those people right here in Mississippi.”

Amazon has other fulfillment centers in Byhalia and Olive Branch. The company’s other magnolia state sites: one logistics delivery station and two “last mile” or “super rural facilities” that act as a final step to deliver packages to customers.

“Today also not only represents the $600 million that Amazon has invested in Mississippi,” said Reeves. “It also represents the future. It represents more companies investing in technology-based industries, that’s going to lead to better jobs, higher wages, and a better quality of life for Mississippians.”

Want more WLBT news in your inbox? Click here to subscribe to our newsletter.

Copyright 2022 WLBT. All rights reserved.