New American leader for Amazon's Rugeley team
Amazon's giant fulfilment centre in Rugeley has grown to become one of the biggest employers in the area since it first opened its doors in 2011.
The massive warehouse and sorting complex at Towers Business Park in the shadow of the Staffordshire town's old power station towers operates of a 22/7 basis through the week
The Rugeley operation, which has 1,800 full time employees, is now being led by American general manager Nathan Fetherston.
Mr Fetherston, originally from Las Vegas, has recently moved to Rugeley from Amazon's base in Coalville in Leicestershire and is keen to make the operation even more efficient.
"We are continually looking for opportunities to improve," said Mr Fetherston, who is impressed with the workforce he has taken over.
"The team here is absolutely fantastic, with great ideas to help us improve and make things better.
"Our ethos is to deliver smiles to people and they are really passionate about that," said Mr Fetherston, who joined Amazon a decade ago and who has worked in the UK for nearly three years.
Over the last thee years Amazon's number of fulfilment centres has grown from eight to 16 across the UK.
Rugeley at 750,000 sq ft – the equivalent of 10 football pitches – is one of the biggest and houses 250 million different products and Mr Fetherston says that it enjoys a great geographical position right in the centre of the country
"We are continually improving and evolving things as business opportunities come along," he added.
The centre's 'pick' towers are made up of four floors where pickers, each equipped with a scanner locate orders, delivered by lorry, that have been put in place by storers.
As well as storing Amazon's own products the fulfilment centre also stores and despatches orders from businesses that outsource the job to Amazon.
Within the centre there are 10 miles of conveyer belts that are utilised in the sophisticated and rapid system to ensure the exact orders are packed and sent out to customers.
Packers are told the exact size of now familiar Amazon cardboard box needed to fit each order.
It operates an open door policy with departments operating without offices to separate them from the workforce. There is one main canteen near reception and other smaller canteens located around the giant building.
Staff work 10-hour shifts – with two 30-minute breaks – over a four-day week.
The fulfilment centre hits its peak around the autumn and will once again this year be recruiting temporary seasonal staff to cope with the build up to Christmas.
New recruits go through a two-week in-house training programme and Amazon also has an apprenticeship scheme in place and aims to develop leadership skills through it. The scheme covers IT, operational leadership and engineering.
Amazon has also introduced Career Choice, an innovative education programme which pre-pays 95 per cent of tuition and associated fees for permanent employees to undertake nationally recognised courses and funds up to £8,000 over four years.
The Seattle-based company, which now employs 24,000 in the UK, is now running regular public tours of the giant building and they are proving popular with schools and clubs.
Rugeley was the first building in the UK to open its doors to public tours and since 2015 more than 6,000 people have visited the site to learn about what happens after they click buy.
Amazon's Rugeley team is supporting a number of local causes in 2018 and has already donated more than £10,000 including £6,000 to the Birmingham Heartlands Hospital.
* Amazon has just reported a huge sales increase for the first quarter of 2018. They were up 43 per cent to £36.7 billion from a year before. Net income rose from £520 million to £1.14bn.
