Massive, clinical... and undeniably cool - Inside the West Midlands' huge robotic Amazon distribution centre
As the grey and white cladding of Amazon's EMA4 looms out of the early morning mist in north Birmingham it's hard to ignore its scale. It is undeniably huge.
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On a chilly December morning, the US firm's four-storey warehouse and distribution centre still looks shiny and new just over a year after it first opened, as it quietly imposes itself on an otherwise innocuous parcel of outer-city hinterland.
This building, notionally in Sutton Coldfield but with a road system, pathway network and postcode all of its own, is not Amazon's biggest 'fulfilment centre'. That title goes to a similar, slightly larger venue in Kent. But nonetheless, it's massive. Development at this scale is cool. Big warehouses are cool.
"The footprint is around 550,000 square feet - that's eight football pitches," the building's general manager Paul Roberts tells me.
"Of course that's only the bottom floor, and there's another three above this one."
Around 2,500 people work at this place, where stock is held and orders are processed, picked and packed before making their way on huge trucks to delivery centres where an even larger delivery network takes over to speed through the final miles between the warehouse and the front door.
But such is the size of this place it barely feels like anyone works here at all. Small groups of staff go about their business quietly and efficiently, everyone clearly well aware of the limits of their own responsibilities. The floor is spotlessly clean.
