'It's our Super Bowl': Oxnard's Amazon facility picks up speed for holiday season
Hundreds of employees hurried around the Amazon Fulfillment Center in Oxnard on Thursday and shouted over the machinery as the countdown to Christmas Eve ticked away.
Millions of packages move through the 850,000 square-foot facility each month. Between mid-November and Dec. 24, that number skyrockets, said Prateek Dahiya, the facility’s director of operations.
“It’s our Super Bowl,” he said. “Black Friday is our playoffs.”
The formidable facility ― located on Sakioka Drive between Rice Avenue and Del Norte Boulevard, south of Highway 101 — sits on nearly 53 acres.
The center shipped its first package nearly two years ago, on Feb. 9, 2022. In that time, staff has doubled to handle the amount of packages that move through center, Dahiya said.
He declined to say how many people work at the site. However, The Star reported almost 2,000 people were employed in April 2022 when the center held a ribbon-cutting ceremony.
Dahiya also declined to specify how many packages are shipped from the location. The Star also reported in April 2022 the facility would be able to process about 2 million packages per week once it was operating at full capacity.
More than 20 million items are stored across the center’s four-story warehouse. While most of the packages that ship from the fulfillment center are delivered to customers in the region and state, some parcels will travel to other parts of the country and world.
Once an item arrives, it is immediately placed into a yellow tote. It will then move along a series of conveyor belts and rollers to a staff member who will place it into its appointed slot on a storage tower, or pod.
A small robot ― following a track lined with barcodes — will move the the pod to its place in the warehouse where it’ll remain until a customer orders an item off it. Dahiya said there are over 60,000 pods in the facility.
When an item is purchased, a robot will bring the appointed pod to an employee at a stationary workstation. A light will shine on the item’s location on the tower and the staff member will place the object into another yellow tote.
All of the millions of items in the building each weigh less than 50 pounds and can easily fit within a bin.
Next, the item will continue its journey along the conveyor system, be divided by order and placed in separate gray bins. The item will then go to the packaging area where it’ll be wrapped and prepared for shipment.
While most items will ship in a premade box, some items will have a custom box built around them. A large machine, somewhat resembling a child helping a mother spin yarn into a ball, wraps items in cardboard.
The packaged items are sorted by destination and wait for a delivery truck.
Oxnard Mayor John Zaragoza said Friday Amazon has been a powerful driver of the local workforce. When the fulfillment center opened, about 60% of the workforce was made up of Oxnard residents. Another 10% were Ventura residents and about 5% lived in Camarillo. The remaining employees lived in other parts of Ventura County and the surrounding area.
He noted that like other large employers, Amazon could do more to provide better wages and stronger benefits to its employees.
“I support Amazon, and I think they’re doing a good job,” Zaragoza said.
Brian J. Varela covers Oxnard, Port Hueneme and Camarillo. He can be reached at brian.varela@vcstar.com or 805-477-8014. You can also find him on Twitter @BrianVarela805.
This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: Oxnard's Amazon facility picks up speed for holiday season
