WILMINGTON – Amazon has opened North Carolina’s largest fulfillment center near Wilmington, with more than 1,000 full-time employees at the robotics facility and more than 100 additional jobs at a nearby delivery station.
The company and regional officials marked the opening Oct. 5 at the New Hanover-Pender county line. Wilmington Business Development said the two facilities are Amazon’s first direct-to-consumer fulfillment and delivery operations in the Cape Fear region.
The fulfillment center has more than 3 million square feet of operating space across four-and-a-half floors, according to WilmingtonBiz. WECT reported a roughly 650,000-square-foot building footprint and said company officials described it as Amazon’s largest fulfillment center in North Carolina and one of its largest nationwide.
The center began gradually ramping operations in August. General manager Josh Lingenfelser told WilmingtonBiz it was operating at 25% to 30% of capacity and planned to increase activity for the holiday season. The operation runs two 10-hour shifts, with maintenance periods between them.
The nearby 142,000-square-foot delivery station opened in mid-August at Pender Commerce Park and is expected to create more than 100 jobs. Together, the fulfillment center and delivery station add at least 1,100 direct jobs to the region.
Amazon says the center uses its latest and largest integration of artificial intelligence, robotics and automation. Employees work with robotic systems to receive, store, pick, pack and sort merchandise. Wilmington Business Development reported that the technology can reduce processing times by as much as 25% compared with earlier facility designs and creates 30% more skilled technical positions in reliability, maintenance and engineering.
WECT reported that the center can process as many as 1 million items a day. Lingenfelser said Wilmington was selected in part because the closest comparable Amazon robotics fulfillment operations were in Savannah, Georgia, and Raleigh, leaving limited inventory close to the growing Wilmington market.
The project also closes a multiyear development cycle. WilmingtonBiz reported that a developer representing Amazon withdrew from a purchase contract for the former BASF vitamin-plant site in early 2022. Amazon later bought the property in August 2024, and construction began a few months afterward. An interlocal agreement between New Hanover and Pender counties coordinated planning and permitting across the county line.
The completed operations give southeastern North Carolina a new large-scale logistics employer and shorten the distance between regional customers and Amazon inventory. The combination of more than 1,100 jobs, high-volume processing and a holiday-season ramp makes the opening a material operating milestone rather than a proposed development.