DHL is planning to increase its European B2C activities in cooperation with other companies totarget the growing e-commerce market, a senior manager said. This would put it into competition
with German-based Hermes which is building up its own European B2C network.“We will be the first provider in Europe to introduce a harmonised B2C product for themail-order sector, and will rely on partnerships alongside the expansion of our own networks,” UweBrinks, head of DHL Parcel Germany, told German transport newspaper DVZ. The parcel deliverycompany planned to use a “common label” to ensure parcel readability across Europe, he noted.
In an interview with the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper earlier this month, Brinks explainedthat shippers such as Amazon or German mail-order company Quelle increasingly had cross-borderparcels for private customers. DHL was responding to this trend by developing a new EU deliveryproduct for mail-order firms and internet retailers, he said. DHL was currently in talks withpossible partners to create a European B2C delivery network, he said.
In Germany, DHL Parcel expected its volume of 753 million items in 2007 to grow about 3% thisyear, Brinks said. In the B2B parcel segment, DHL aimed to regain the market leadership from DPD,he added. In the B2C segment, usage of the Packstation pick-up machines, currently a single-digitproportion of customers, was growing and could reach a double-digit percentage, he said.
