Amazon invests 700 million in robotizing its warehouses in Europe

Last year, Amazon made more than 7 billion shipments in 24 to 48 hours to members of its Prime subscription program around the world. Of these, about 2,000 took place in Europe. Never before has the e-commerce giant managed to manage so many orders so quickly in its history, the company says.

To achieve this, since 2019 Amazon has invested more than 700 million euros in more than 1,000 new robotic innovations based on artificial intelligence throughout the European network of Amazon logistics centers. This year alone it plans to introduce 120 new automation technologies in its warehouse network.

These technologies range from high-speed self-labeling machines and robotic arms, to pallet shifters, item sorters and automated guided vehicles that move autonomously through centers. "The introduction of new technologies in the last ten years has created 50,000 new jobs in our logistics centers in Europe," said Stefano La Rovere, global director of mechatronics and sustainable packaging at Amazon.

All these developments have been carried out in the innovation laboratory that the group opened in 2017 in the town of Vercelli, in northern Italy. The center, one of the most advanced in robotic innovation, employs a multidisciplinary team of engineers and scientists dedicated to finding innovative solutions to make the daily tasks of its workers more efficient.

Another line of research that Amazon is working on in this laboratory are solutions to reduce package volume and make shipments more sustainable. For example, with machines that create recyclable and custom-made packages on demand, reducing the volume of boxes for thousands of products. These machines work from a sensor that scans the products and assigns them packaging based on their weight and size.

In total, more than 700 million Amazon shipments in Europe have gone packaging-free since 2019, and more than 50% are now delivered without a box or with reduced, recyclable packaging, such as a paper bag or envelope. cardboard, they indicate from the group.

To reduce its enormous consumption of paper and cardboard, the North American company uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to identify products that can be safely delivered in lighter and smaller packages.

This in turn allows you to reduce emissions from your fleet of vans and trucks and reduce the load they transport. From Amazon they assure that in the last nine years the weight of packaging per shipment has been reduced by 41%, on average, which represents the savings of more than 2 million tons of packaging.

Since beginning to introduce robotics into its centers in 2012, the e-commerce giant has continued to increase the number of tasks performed by these machines in its warehouses. Behind this strategy is an effort by the company to reduce its enormous logistics costs at a time when its sales are slowing down.