Online retailer Amazon has acquired the former Jacob's biscuit factory on Belgard Road in Tallaght, Dublin.

The building has been lying vacant since Jacob’s biscuit factory closed its doors in October 2008, with the loss of 200 jobs.

The e-commerce giant already has one of its main data centres in Tallaght. The company purchased Tesco’s distribution centre on the Greenhills Road in December 2010, repurposing into a 22,300sq m (240,000sq ft) data centre.

It is also reported to be investing in a massive data centre at the former Shinko Microelectronics site in Tallaght, having acquired the site last year.

The Jacob's building acquisition, first reported in the Tallaght Echo, is set to generate a major jobs boost for the local economy.

Seven data centres

With seven data centres in Ireland, Amazon is one of the country’s biggest data-centre owners, along with Microsoft and Google.

The retailer employs more than 1,400 staff in Ireland, across sites in Dublin and Cork. Last November it announced 300 new roles in Dublin, including data centre technicians, software engineers, security specialists and technical managers.

At the time, Amazon chief technology officer Werner Vogels said the company has been "an active contributor to the Dublin technology community for a decade and during this time, we have been extremely impressed with the creativity and strong technical talent available in the country".

“By expanding our presence in Dublin we will further accelerate the growth of some of the most exciting businesses we have at Amazon and support for our customers here in Europe and around the globe,” he added.

Amazon also has offices in Cork, where it employs more than 800 customer service and seller support staff.

The company employs more than 32,000 permanent staff in the European Union. Since establishing in Ireland in September 2004 it has invested more than €1.5 billion in the economy.