Waterworld warehouses

The outlandish idea would see depots submerged underwater, with items summoned to the surface by acoustic vibrations.

Details of the patent, which was filed earlier this year in the US, show Amazon's vision for using lakes, reservoirs and purpose-built pools as fulfilment centres.

It shows a number of ways stock would be handled inside an Aquatic Storage Facility, such as items being dropped into the pools by parachutes or trucks.

As far as I can see there is no mention of water slides. Shame.

But in each case, packages would be contained within a watertight box, complete with an air canister. When the item is ordered by a customer, a noise transmitted under water would trigger the air canister to inflate a balloon to float the package to the surface.

The driver behind the idea is the search for a more space efficient way of storing items. Whether this rationale is strong enough to overcome the many obvious difficulties is another matter.

The concept joins another ‘out there’ Amazon patent unveiled last year, the floating warehouse in the sky served by drones.  

I am beginning to think these ideas may be just noise to distract us from the uncomfortable fact that Amazon is on course to take over much of the available traditional warehousing in key markets around the world, such as the UK.