The online super-supplier Amazon is moving forward with its development of a sortation center in Columbia County.
The White Oak Business Park in Appling, Ga. is the site in development for the sortation center, which should bring in hundreds of jobs to the area. The center, which is already under construction, is designed to sort packages before being transferred to a delivery station. The latest estimates have the center being completed later in 2021.
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“Amazon is excited to continue to invest in the state of Georgia with a sortation center that will help with critical package sortation needs, enabling the efficient shipping and delivery our customers love and providing hundreds of jobs for the Columbia County workforce,” said Sudheer Bayanker, director of operations for the new center. “This new sortation center represents Amazon’s unwavering commitment to safety, technological innovations and skilled teams who are obsessed with delivering for our customers.”
Quiet Appling, Ga. has already seen industrial development recently by way of the Club Car warehouse located just minutes from the site of the new Amazon center, which was established in 2018.
The center will increase the investment Amazon has made into the state of Georgia, which is over $3.2 billion dollars over the last 10 years factoring in infrastructure and employee compensation.
“Georgia is ideally suited to handle the exponentially increasing growth in e-commerce, and we appreciate Amazon’s continued investments in our state that create job opportunities for Georgians,” said Georgia Department of Economic Development Commissioner Pat Wilson.
The state of operations within Amazon’s fulfillment centers has made national news on several occasions. Most recently, a center in Bessemer, Ala. that employs nearly 6,000 people had a center-wide vote for unionization. The results have yet to come in and if passed, it would be the first Amazon warehouse to have successfully unionized in America.
MORE: Amazon Expands Columbia County Presence
It would be a milestone win for the Alabama workers. Participation in unions has shrunk to about 11% last year, down from 30% of the nonagricultural workforce in 1964, according to the Washington Post.
Amazon PR could not be reached for comment.
Tyler Strong is the Business Editor for The Augusta Press. Reach him at tyler@theaugustapress.com
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