Amazon is spending $2.6 million to bolt eight new robotics workstations onto its sprawling JAX2 fulfillment center on Pecan Park Road, part of a permit the city of Jacksonville issued on August 21 for work that will turn stretches of manual conveyor into automated, robot-assisted picking lines.
The project, first reported by the Jacksonville Daily Record, will add a motorized driven roller bridge that merges into the facility’s existing conveyor system, according to the outlet’s Mathis Report. The bridge uses motorized rollers to move packages between mezzanines, building sections, or process areas, and the new setup will convert that portion of the operation from manual to automatic. The so-called ARSAW picking stations — Amazon Robotics Semi-Automated Workstations — bring inventory pods directly to employees through mobile drive units, eliminating the need for workers to walk long distances or climb ladders to retrieve items, per the same report.
Ohio Contractor Handles the Install
Intelligrated Systems LLC, based in Mason, Ohio, will handle the installation of the new robotics workstations, the Daily Record reports. The vendor’s ownership picture shifted just weeks before the Jacksonville permit was filed: private equity firm American Industrial Partners finalized its acquisition of Honeywell’s Intelligrated business unit in August, merging it with Trew and Transnorm to form a combined warehouse automation supplier, according to Robotics 24/7. Honeywell had originally acquired Intelligrated in 2016 for $1.5 billion before divesting its supply chain automation assets this year, per Robotics 24/7 and SCDigest’s coverage of the deal.
JAX2 sits at 12900 Pecan Park Road in Northwest Jacksonville, close to Jacksonville International Airport, and is a massive operation by any measure: 857,470 square feet spread across a first floor and three mezzanines, part of roughly 2.3 million total square feet at the site, per the Daily Record’s reporting. Amazon leases the facility from JDM Partners of Phoenix, which bought the property from USAA Real Estate Co. for $107.8 million in July 2020 — the largest commercial real estate transaction recorded in Northeast Florida that year, according to the Jacksonville Daily Record’s 2021 ranking of top regional deals. USAA had originally acquired the 169-acre site in 2016 for $15 million before developing it.
Jacksonville’s Amazon Footprint Keeps Growing
Amazon opened the Pecan Park center in September 2017, making JAX2 the flagship of the company’s Jacksonville footprint, and followed it a month later with the AllianceFlorida at Cecil Commerce Center location in West Jacksonville, a 1.1 million-square-foot facility. Those first two Jacksonville fulfillment centers created 2,700 jobs and received $26.7 million in combined city and state incentives — but every subsequent Amazon project in the region, including 12 additional facilities and a planned 50,000-square-foot warehouse Amazon.com Services LLC will lease for an air cargo facility near the airport, has gone up without tax subsidies, per the Daily Record. Since those first two centers, Amazon has also opened another fulfillment center, two sortation centers, a heavy bulk freight center, and several delivery stations across the region…