Amazon & Matalan Increase Staff for Christmas

Amazon UK is getting ready to hire around 10,000 staff at its packing centres to help cope with Christmas demand.

Last year saw Amazon UK packaging plants ship more that 2.1 million products within a 24 hour period.

Director of Operations at Amazon, Catherine McDermott said:” On our busiest shopping day last Christmas, we saw customers order a total of three million items during one 24-hour period at a rate of 35 items every second. We look forward to welcoming a good number of new faces to our centres [and] welcoming back temporary employees who join us every year.

Amazon already has eight packing centres in the UK, including its new Hemel Hempstead site which opened earlier this year, where staff packaged up orders including books, electronics and clothing and plans to open a further three packing centres over the next two years, creating 2,000 permanent jobs.

Amazon is not the only UK getting ready for the Christmas demand – Matalan is also preparing to increase its staffing number and aims to double its extra Christmas staff to 5,000 this year.