Amazon breaks ground on new distribution centre near Graz

After the original project faced opposition and environmental concerns from residents and authorities in Graz, it moved to a rural community outside the city

Last Wednesday, Amazon started working on a new distribution centre near Graz, Austria. The centre will be located in the Zitteling commercial park, near the town of Premstätten. When complete it will be the sixth such centre in Austria.

As the APA reports, this centre will be relatively smaller, providing for only 270 jobs, as Amazon is trying to bring its distribution closer to customers. However, initially, the project was supposed to be bigger and located within the Graz city limits, but it was blocked due to residents’ and local authorities’ objections.

Issues in Graz

The online retail giant Amazon originally planned to construct a large distribution centre in Graz’s Liebenau district. However, the project met resistance from local residents and when the news that there was to be no environmental impact assessment, as the ORF reports, the city’s administration launched a complaint against the company.

This put the project on hold back in March of 2022 and Amazon started looking for a new location for the centre. They quickly found one, just nine kilometres out of Graz – in Premstätten. The company started construction of the distribution centre in the local Zitteling commercial park.

The project calls for space for 650 vehicles and a storage facility – on an area of 50,000 square metres. The end of construction meanwhile is scheduled for November 2023. The company’s regional manager Miriam Enzi explained that the centre is needed in the first place so that the company can guarantee shorter delivery times for customers, as the ORF reports.

Support from the local mayor and sustainability claims

Premstätten Mayor Matthias Pokorn was glad to take on the project in his own municipality, as the ORF reports. He explained that Zitteling is not a residential area and it would not need to face the same opposition.

Additionally, according to the manager of the business park, Markus Gollob, the new facility will be equipped with a roof-mounted solar system, to increase its positive environmental impact. Moreover, the impact of job creation could not be understated for the region, as well as increasing the attractiveness of Zitteling, regardless of the fact that the current project is a scaled-down version of the original.