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New UPS facility in New Castle

UPS has added a new $40 million sorting facility in New Castle. 

It’s just a mile down the road from the old sorting facility, and officials say its fully automated sorting line will allow for 70% more packages to be processed. 

“This automated system will actually direct it through a series of belts, sort it to the correct belt within the facility as well as stick the proper labelling on to that package within the facility—all of this, again, fully automated and without, really, any human intervention,” said UPS Director of Operations for the Chesapeake North District Rob Nichols.

But Nicholas says the move will create jobs with increased production, not kill them with automation.

“Even though it’s fully automated, you still need people to oversee packages coming out of the unload and through the system itself. So the nature of that job has changed, but in many cases, in fact most cases, that job still exists,” he said. 

Nicholas adds this is in part because of an increased shipping demand in the region. 

“Because we’re going to have such a volume influx coming into this facility—not only from here but from other areas—we expect and know and in fact have already seen there will be a number of additional jobs created because of this,” he said.

Nichols says he expects a significant uptick in seasonal hiring for Christmas time and says some of those hires stay on after the holidays.

UPS currently employs more than 11,000 people in Delaware.

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