Amazon is to provide a double jobs boost to Fife after revealing plans to recruit hundreds of new permanent and seasonal staff.
The firm has said it was creating 1,000 new full-time posts at its eight UK fulfilment centres, in a move that will increase its permanent workforce in Britain to around 7,000.
A proportion of the new jobs will be added to its Fife warehousing operation, where hundreds of extra seasonal roles are also expected to be added before Christmas.
At 1.1 million sq. ft, the Fife site is the largest in the firm’s UK warehousing arsenal and will receive a proportionate allocation of the new full-time jobs.
However, Amazon was unable to detail the exact number of jobs to be added at Dunfermline, or at its base at Gourock, as the operational details of the latest nationwide recruitment round will only emerge in the months ahead.
“We have announced 1,000 permanent jobs, but we haven’t yet outlined what centres and what proportion (of jobs will go where),” the spokesman said.
In the 16 years since Amazon first established a trading presence in the UK, the company has invested more than £1 billion to service a business that shifts more than 100 million items each year.
The new staff will work four 10-hour shifts a week with three days off, and will have a starting wage of £7.39 per hour.
Director of UK operations, John Tagawa, said Amazon was creating the new jobs in response to the continuing rise in demand for convenient online shopping.
“Over the past two years we have added well in excess of 2,000 new employees to our workforce, and we are delighted to be able to add a further 1,000 to that number over the coming months,” Mr Tagawa said. “We have continued to focus day in, day out on providing the very best shopping experience for our customers, and as we see greater demand, we are able to rapidly grow our talented team across the UK.”