With Christmas fast approaching, now less than two weeks away, most people will have recently been purchasing gifts for friends and family. According to Statista.com, this year, the country is expected to have nearly 60 million e-commerce users.

One of the biggest global players in this particular market is Amazon, with over 15million UK subscribers to its Prime membership, as of the end of 2021.

The company, founded by American entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, has its closest premises to Hucknall, just nine miles down the road in nearby Sutton-in-Ashfield.

Located just off the A617, the fulfilment centre opened in 2020. The impressive building has a footprint of approximately 550,000 square feet, the size of seven football pitches.

The site has more than 1,000 permanent employees, as well as a number of seasonal workers to help when the workload increases.

This is just another example of Amazon's increasing presence in the local area. Since 2010, the company has invested more than £1.2 billion in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. This investment has led to the production of goods and services that have contributed over an estimated £1.3 billion to the region's GDP since then.

Sutton's fulfilment centre looks after smaller products – which are defined as anything smaller than a Monopoly board – and features advanced Amazon Robotics.

In simplistic terms, the robots fetch and carry the shelving units filled with items to the stow stations and those working on pick. They follow the equivalent of QR codes on the floor to determine their route and are equipped with sensors to prevent them colliding with one another which makes for a beautifully choreographed spectacle of the robots carrying out their tasks. They can also amazingly detect when they are low on battery and take themselves off to charging stations when necessary.

Photo courtesy of Amazon.

Whilst some would assume that the use of robotics in the centre would decrease job opportunities, the opposite is actually true. The centres with robotics employ more people than those that do not. This is because robotics engineers and experts are employed to maintain and repair the equipment at the fulfilment centres that use them.

The fulfilment centre is not the first stage of the process, all goods first arrive at one of Amazon's two receive centres based in Coventry and Doncaster. Most of the products aren't Amazon's, they belong to other businesses who use Amazon to reach their customer base. The majority of these businesses are SMEs (Small and medium sized enterprises).

The receive centres then distribute the products across Amazon's UK fulfilment network which is made up of 30 centres.

Upon arrival all goods are scanned. Those that have already been previously dealt with by Amazon will have a number on making it instantly identifiable. However, if this is not the case it is scanned, measured and weighed before being given a unique number.

From there it goes to stow, thanks to Amazon Robotics. The person at the stowing station then scans the item so that the company knows its precise location. The art is then to quickly find a neat place on the shelving unit to place the item on to so as not to damage it but also to keep the process moving at a decent pace.

Angelique Selina James at the Stow station. Photo Credit: Tom Surgay.

Once the item leaves stow it is essentially in storage and is available for customers to buy online. When someone clicks buy, the item is picked. Again, thanks to the robotics the shelving unit is taken to the picking station. The picker is shown which item needs to be picked via a screen and the pod in which it is stowed lights up to show them where the item is on the shelving unit. It is scanned and moved on to pack.

The item is packed up before going through SLAM, the machine where the shipping label is attached. At first glance it looks as if the labels are being stamped or pressed onto the packages but this is not the case, instead it is done via air pressure.

Ashira Mellor on Pick. Photo Credit: Tom Surgay.

This marks the end of each item's time at the fulfilment centre and from here it is transported to a sortation centre, the nearest of which is in Redditch.

When the item has been sorted it is delivered to the customer's front door.

Products entering the SLAM machine, where the shipping labels are affixed via air pressure. Photo Credit: Tom Surgay.

The advantage of having such a major company like Amazon in the local area means that there are plenty of job opportunities for local people.

Speaking exclusively to Hucknall Nub News, Vivek Khanka the General Manager of the fulfilment centre, said: "We announced 1,500 new apprenticeships across the UK this year and that's on top of 1500 the previous year.

"We have good links with education, we're a member of the chamber of commerce which I think is always a good thing to do. There are a vast majority of goods that come through the fulfilment centres that aren't ours they're SMEs, some of those are chamber members, and it's good to have those links with them."

Massive global companies are often easy targets for climate activists but Amazon have made steps to combat their carbon footprint.

One example of this is the creation of certificates "to highlight products that meet sustainability standards and help preserve the natural world".

Mr Khanka said: "There are a lot of changes we're trying to do. We installing solar panels on top of this fulfilment centre and others across the country. There are lots of improvements that we're trying to make in terms of using renewable energy."

The company has also increased the number of electric delivery vehicles it uses and has tentatively begun to use electric HGVs as well.

Mr Khanka added: "We optimise the amount of packaging we can get into a trailer so that reduces the number of vehicle journeys. We've double decker transporters as well now so rather than it be just one container at one level, we actually put a double decker one in so it only needs one journey rather than two or three or four so all that helps."

What is clear from spending just a brief time at the fulfilment centre is how contented and focused the staff seem. Everyone Nub News spoke to understood the merit of their job and why it was important in guaranteeing the smooth progress of each order.

For more information about Amazon fulfilment centres, click here.