Online retailer Amazon opened its new returns centre in Sereď. (source: Jana Liptáková)
The US online retailer Amazon announced last week the closure of its returns centre in Dobrovíz near Prague in the Czech Republic. The recently launched returns centre in Sereď should take over part of its operation, the Hospodárske Noviny daily informed.
Amazon opened one of its largest and most technologically advanced returns centres last November. It is still looking for staff and hopes that some of the 1,500 workers from the nearby Samsung plant in Voderady, which is expected to close in April, might move to its centre in Sereď.
“They can find jobs either in our returns centre in Sereď as well as in our corporate office in Bratislava,” said Miroslava Remenárová, PR manager of Amazon, as cited by the daily.
In January, the South-Korean company Samsung confirmed the consolidation of its local production. After 10 years of operation, it will close down the less sophisticated production plant in Voderady near Trnava and move it 20 km to its second plant, in Galanta. It cites lack of workers and intensifying pressure to increase wages as the reason. Sereď is about 20 km from Voderady and about 12 km from Galanta.
Samsung employs about 570 core employees in Voderady with 1,000 more hired from external sources.
Jana Mesárová from the HR agency Wincott People believes it is quite possible that people from Samsung would go to Amazon.
“It will also depend on the conditions Samsung offers them,” said Masárová. Samsung has promised to offer all its core employees in Voderady a working place in Galanta under the same conditions.
Amazon, as part of its consolidation of its operation, will close down its returns centre in Dobrovíz near Prague as of May. Its employees will move to the local distribution centre.
“We decided that in the Czech Republic we will focus fully on the operation of distribution services at our logistics centre in Dobrovíz,” said Remenárová as cited by idnes.cz.
The returns centre in Dobrovís was opened in 2013. Two years ago, Amazon also opened a 95,000 square metres distribution centre nearby with the capacity to handle 18 million items. This enables Amazon to dispatch up to one million parcels per day.
Amazon has more than 140 distribution centres, of which one third are in Europe.
