Amazon has officially opened a new fulfillment centre in Northampton, and said it would open another facility in nearby Kettering this autumn, creating more than 4,000 jobs between the two facilities.

The move brings Amazon’s investment in the county to £1 billion, and comes amid a broader investment in the UK that the company announced a year ago.

The Seattle e-commerce giant confirmed in March it would close its Marston Gate site in Bedfordshire, its first location in the UK, opened in 1998.

Some 500 staff from Marston Gate were told they could transfer to the Northampton facility.

Amazon said the Northampton warehouse is its most advanced operation in the UK, with thousands of robots working alongside staff on three floors.

Customer deliveries have begun at the Northampton site, while in Kettering recruitment is underway for engineers, and professionals in HR, IT, finance and operations.

The Kettering facility is to be the UK’s largest cross-dock operation, sorting and routing customer items across the country.

It is planned to handle around 20 million items each week, creating 2,000 permanent jobs and thousands of seasonal roles.

Amazon has also expanded its Shoreditch headquarters with the opening of a third building, bringing a total of 6,000 staff together on the campus.

Earlier this month showed a next-generation semi-autonomous robot prototype called Proteus that responds to voice prompts, which it plans to deploy in its European warehouses in the first half of next year, amid a broader investment in its European distribution network.