In the lead up to Christmas many people may be ordering gifts online from Amazon to arrive as soon as it can, and we spent a day with those who make that possible.

Deeside's Amazon Delivery Station has been running for over a year now and delivers to postcodes across North Wales, Chester, parts of Cheshire and Shropshire.

The building was the first in the UK to be designed specifically for the needs of an Amazon Delivery Station.

The station has created more than 50 permanent jobs and approximately the same number of seasonal roles.

The building's footprint is 9,000 square metres and has been the blueprint for Amazon Delivery Station designs. It has a raised platform that holds a machine that helps filter the shipments, which Nick Liptrot, the Senior Delivery Station Manager at Deeside explains that it is an important feature.

He said: "In a typical building, the piece of kit will be on the floor but then it blocks all of those doors, and we can only get vehicles off one side. This is purpose built; we lift it up we can get dispatch on both sides of the building at once rather than just one side."

It is more efficient and safer for everyone to have a launch pad on each side of the building as there is less traffic on one side of the building.

The vehicles and the trailers are kept separate, rather than coming in through the same gate so there is a distance between the drivers, the vans, and the trailers.

Shipments have come from Fulfilment Centres and are already in boxes when they reach the Deeside Delivery Station, which is the stage that gets the shipments out to drivers, who then take them out for delivery.

Tens of thousands of parcels pass through the building each day however it does differ day by day.

Nick explained that one person can order one shipment, but another person can order three shipments, so the volume depends on the customers. They have a late cut off as they want to get as many parcels to customers as quickly as possible.

He said: "About 1am or 2am is the last time, it depends on stations on how far away they are from fulfilment centres, picking and packing, to when we can get it to our delivery station all depends on the number of shipments which are coming though. It's anything that's online, so with a football match, sales increase at half time, at the Coronation Street adverts; sales increase but its seasonal and it depends on what's happening in the outside world."

An example of this is at Christmas, where he estimates that sales increase by roughly 80% to 90%.

To keep on top of demands there are three shifts: night, morning, and evening.

The process starts at 2am, where the staff sort the shipments and begin to sequence them.

Nick explained: "You'll see a little yellow sticker on your Amazon box when it comes in, that's what we do. The address label means nothing to us our technology doesn't work off that. You scan it and it prints off that little sticker you see on your box."

The sticker tells the workers where the shipment needs to go ready for the routes to be created.

It details what aisle it needs to go in, the row number and bag number ready for drivers. The process is kept simple as possible.

They start building routes at 9.30 am and the first vehicles leave building at 10.30 am.

Vehicles arrive around 10.15am and must have a vehicle check. The last vehicle leaves the launch pads around 11.30 am. This can depend on how busy they are.

They also have flex drivers, who are individuals in a car that sign up to an app to do the later deliveries, sometimes the same day deliveries.