Amazon is still more than a year away from opening its massive new Elkhart robotic fulfillment center.
Amazon announced Thursday that it will open the 800,000-square-foot center near Elkhart County Road 19 and the Indiana Toll Road in fall 2025. The e-commerce giant plans to hire 1,000 people full-time starting at $20.50 an hour, with benefits that include health insurance, college tuition reimbursement, and 20 weeks of paid parental leave.
Amazon regional spokesman Andre Woodson says hiring will start one to two months before the launch so that workers can be trained on how to safely work with the cutting edge robotic technology.
"We'll actually have a dedicated team that specifically works with the robotic technology, so they'll work on the robotics fields and interface with this technology on a day-to-day basis, and so will a lot of our other associates," Woodson said. "So it's super important that we'll have them in the facility, we'll start to train, so obviously we're creating that safe work environment for our workforce."
The facility has appeared to be finished for over a year now, and Amazon initially had planned a 2023 opening. The company has declined to explain the delay but an industry analyst in January told WVPE that Amazon overbuilt during the pandemic, as e-commerce boomed because we were all trapped in our homes. Amazon has been waiting for excess capacity to clear before putting the Elkhart center into production.
Amazon recently also broke ground on a smaller delivery station near the Elkhart airport.
