Amazon has opened its ninth distribution centre in France, a €200M multi-storey fulfilment site at Colombier-Saugnieu, east of Lyon. Coded LYS2 after the nearby Lyon-Saint-Exupéry airport, the facility recently went live and has begun showing up as the sender on some French deliveries.
A long-delayed build
The project had been on the table since 2018, but it spent years clearing legal challenges before work could begin. Bouygues Bâtiment Industrie then built it in 20 months. The site covers 60,000 sqm on the ground, and two extra levels lift usable space close to 160,000 sqm. Inside, Amazon has installed its own automation and robotics. Total investment runs to more than €200M.
Jobs at the centre of the message
Amazon said little about where LYS2 sits in its operational map and a great deal about headcount, fitting for an opening attended by state and regional officials and by Thibaut Guilluy, director-general of France Travail. The company has already created and filled more than 1,000 permanent jobs, expects 1,500 by year-end, and has floated 3,000 over the longer term. It called the site its largest in France in five years, under a national recruitment agreement signed in 2021 and renewed last year.
More XXL sites to come
LYS2 will not be the last of its kind. Amazon has two sites of around 110,000 sqm in the pipeline, one in Eure-et-Loir and another near Beauvais, plus a multi-storey warehouse of more than 180,000 sqm planned in Alsace. The push points to a company still betting on large, automated fulfilment capacity in France, even as parcel volumes and delivery economics keep shifting.
