German consumer parcel specialist Hermes will offer a CO2 neutral parcel product next year as partof the Otto Group’s sustainability strategy, a senior manager said yesterday.
Hermes will launch a sustainable “green parcel” product under a brand name and at no extracost to the customer, sales and marketing director Frank Iden said at the German CEP Congress inCologne. “We want to bring out our own label with no ‘green-washing’,” he declared.
The Otto Group, the Hermes parent company, is targeting a 50% CO2 emissions reduction by2020, Iden said during a discussion on ‘Green Logistics’. Hermes itself aims to avoid rather thancompensate CO2 emissions through efficient operations and active environmental management measures.The parcels operator had already reduced the average CO2 emission per shipment from 300g to 260g,he pointed out.
According to its 2008 environmental report, Hermes aims to reduce its CO2 emissions fromtransportation by 2% a year and to cut those from depots by 3.5% a year. Measures includeoptimising transportation through GPS technology and operating a 2,000-strong fleet of modernvehicles at most 18 months old.
Hermes will also invest next year in making its network of 14,000 parcel shops more “visible”in the street, Iden said at the conference. The parcel shops are a clear success story and generatenew customer flows for the retailers, he stressed. The parcel collection and drop-off points areoffered as a ‘shop-in-shop’ service within independent retail outlets such as newsagents,dry-cleaners and petrol stations, and are generally identified with small signs or shop windowposters.
Separately, Hermes Europe chief and Otto Group services director Hanjo Schneider told Germantransport newspaper DVZ in an interview that Hermes had grown 8% in Germany in the first half ofthis year. The company aimed for similar growth for the year as a whole, although this depended onthe peak Christmas season, which generates 40% of revenues, he added.
Hermes said in a press release that it expects 40% more shipments during the Christmas seasonthan the average figure for the year as a whole, and will probably transport more than 33 millionshipments in December.
