With an investment of $100 million, Amazon Turkiye Fulfillment Center officially started operations

I was invited to the official opening ceremony of the Amazon Turkiye Fulfillment Center on Oct 4. It is located in Tuzla (Istanbul) and very close to Sabiha Gökçen Airport on the Asian side of Istanbul. Actually this fulfillment center was opened last year but due to pandemic restrictions official opening ceremony took place on Oct 4 and as media we were allowed to the center.

Stefano Perego (Vice President of Customer Fulfillment and Global Operations for EU at Amazon), Richard Marriott  (Amazon Türkiye Country Manager), Hakan Karadogan (Amazon Türkiye Operations, General Manager) and top level government officials attended the ceremony, including Mustafa Varank, A. Burak Dağlıoğlu and Zekeriya Çoştu.

Every detail is considered at Amazon Türkiye Fulfillment Center

Following the speeches, we were joined by Tugba Ayhan, Senior Operations Manager at Manager Amazon Türkiye, to visit the fulfillment center. It was quite interesting to see the behind the scene of such a huge operation, from receiving the customer orders to the delivery. Considering every detail in mind, I was immensely impressed with the handling of the operation, thanks to the help of technology.

HR and IT teams work closely on site at Amazon Türkiye Fulfillment Center

What really strikes me is, as Tuğba Ayhan told, the HR and IT departments work closely with the operation teams on the site. Why? HR and IT teams can answer the demands of operation teams immediately, which sounded logical.  

Here are some notes from the event:

✏ Amazon Fulfillment Center of Türkiye hires 800 people and covers an area of 61.000 sqm.

✏ As announced by Amazon, the company invested USD100 million in the Turkish fulfillment center. So far, Amazon invested TL5.2 billion (~USD1.7 bio), as put by Richard Marriott, in the Turkish market.

✏ Amazon started operating in Türkiye in 2018 and Amazon Prime arrived in 2020.

✏ There are 45.000 Turkish SMEs active at Amazon Türkiye

✏ The e-export volume of the Turkish SMEs at Amazon exceeded €500+ million

✏ €35 million of the e-exports at Amazon have been realized to the EU

Probably you’ll remember Amazon had acquired Datarow, a Turkish data visualization startup, at an undisclosed amount in 2020.