Amazon announced Wednesday that its warehouse in Coffeyville, Kansas is closing, which will leave hundreds of employees without a job.
Having set up the facility in 1999 in order to move to a rural location and avoid heavy state taxes, the e-commerce giant is one of the biggest employers in southeast Kansas, according to TechTimes.
The move comes as Amazon focuses on changing its distribution network so more customers receive their orders on time, which it plans to accomplish by building warehouses near big cities. Signing deals with New York, Texas and California also gives the company a chance to be physically closer to customers, as well as take advantage of holiday periods of tax collection. This will let Amazon save money on sales taxes for setting up warehouses and giving people jobs.
Coffeyville officials have known that Amazon was thinking about shutting the warehouse down for months, and have spent that time offering incentives for the company to change its mind, but to no avail, GeekWire reported.
"This is not a decision we made lightly and we are committed to supporting our employees through this transition," an Amazon spokesperson said in an email. "We regularly evaluate our network to ensure we are placing fulfillment centers as close to our customers as possible."
The move from Coffeyville will result in 600 to 700 employees losing their jobs, TechTimes reported. The Amazon job cuts are the latest to take place in Coffeyville, following cable and wire maker Southwire deciding in March to let go about 200 people as it shuts down its plant, and John Deere's announcement in August that it will lay off 38 workers due to slowing demand for farm machinery.
Closing warehouses is a rare situation for Amazon, but the company has done it before in Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Nevada in 2009, and one in Dallas County, Texas in 2011.
