ACCORDING TO SEVERAL media reports, ecommerce giant Amazon.com, Inc. will be bringing a giant fulfillment centre to the former Ford assembly plant site in Talbotville, with construction to redevelop the site this week.
Fulfillment centres are huge warehouses that help Amazon store products, ship them and handle returns quickly. The Seattle-based e-commerce giant is on an expansion spree on the back of a meteoric rise in its business, thanks to a surge in online orders during coronavirus-induced lockdowns.
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Speculation regarding Amazon’s interest in the site has been swirling in recent months. The Talbotville site would join the company’s two new leased warehouses in London ― one at Huron Street and Robins Hill Road and a second at 580 Industrial Road. Both facilities will be operational in the upcoming months, and its expected the warehouses will employ more than 100 workers.
According to reports, Broccolini Construction has purchased the entire Ford Talbotville site. The firm, which has offices in Montreal, Toronto and Ottawa, is building additional Amazon centres in Canada, and will often purchase and redevelop sites and lease the buildings to Amazon.
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Amazon currently operation 10 distribution facilities in Ontario and 16 across Canada, with a number of new development applications having been filed by the company, most of them just outside major population centres.
The Ford site ― 254 hectares of land on Highway 4 south of Highway 401 ― closed in 2011 after 44 years of operation.
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