First look inside Amazon Rugeley centre as Christmas rush comes
This is the first glimpse inside internet giant Amazon's massive distribution centre in Staffordshire.
The huge warehouse, or fulfilment centre as the company prefers to call it, only opened in Rugeley last year, and this is the first time that any newspaper has gone behind the scenes.
The building, next to the town's power station, covers an area of 800,000 sq ft, around 20 times the size of a large out-of-town superstore, and everything from children's toys to clothing is stored among thousands of shelves, rails and racks.
An electronic database keeps track of stock movements while a fleet of landtrains are used to move stock around the vast site.
The company is recruiting 1,000 extra staff to cope with the Christmas rush. The first Monday in December, or "Cyber Monday" is usually the busiest day of the year for online orders, and the company is bracing itself for a rush of 35 orders per second.
While the normal deadline for Christmas orders is December 21, the company offers a service in some areas which allows orders taken before 8.30am on Christmas Eve to be delivered that evening.
Inside Amazon's well-oiled machine - See today's Express & Star
