Hartlepool Sixth Form College students tour Stockton's Amazon fulfilment centre

During the tour, students from Hartlepool Sixth Form College saw how Amazon stores, picks and packs products that are shipped from Stockton to customers around the UK, applying their business and engineering theory in a practical advanced operation.

The students were also treated to a presentation hosted by the managerial team to hear about their experience of working at Amazon and opportunities available for employment.

This was followed by a Q&A session with employees from the engineering, HR, operations and workplace health and safety departments.

Amazon in Stockton hopes to further its connection with Hartlepool Sixth Form College and local colleges by inviting more students from the school to the fulfilment centre to broaden their knowledge of different departments within the company.

Speaking on the visit from Hartlepool Sixth Form College, Amazon site leader Richard Griffiths said: “At Amazon, we are passionate about the growth and development of young people and want to showcase the endless opportunities that are available to them.

"It was a pleasure to welcome students from Hartlepool Sixth Form College to our fulfilment centre and chat to them about the many routes to employment.

"We hope that they gained valuable information from our team.”

Thomas Standing, a member of the Amazon team, added: “We are always happy to welcome students in to tour our fulfilment centre.

"I hope the students from Hartlepool Sixth Form College enjoyed their time here as much as we enjoyed hosting them.

"We hope the insight to various functional roles and our Q&A supported students with their career journey. Who knows – we may have had some future employees.”

Tracy Hall, from Hartlepool Sixth Form College, said: “The visit to the Amazon site was very educational in that it enabled the students to apply the theory taught in the classroom to real life, particularly in terms of the technology and automation invested to create efficiencies and marketing benefits.”

The personal, professional histories given by the staff also enabled the students to appreciate that you do not always need a degree or higher education to be successful in a career or job.

Overall, it was a very successful visit, organised effectively by Tom and his colleagues at Amazon, who were all very accommodating and knowledgeable.”

Amazon supports the communities where it operates and has delivered free computer science and STEM education programmes to more than 700,000 students across the UK through Amazon Future Engineer.