The UK’s second-largest parcel carrier, Yodel, is opening an additional 13 sites to handle theforecasted pre-Christmas increase in parcel volumes, including seven satellite sites, five
standalone service centres and a returns centre in the UK’s Midlands region.Since experiencing high-profile performance failures during the 2010 and 2011 winter peakseasons as the company struggled to integrate the newly acquired former DHL Domestic business, thecompany claims to have achieved an “award winning performance” last year, which it said saw anumber of clients transfer parcel volumes to Yodel.
The parcel carrier said it now had a dedicated team planning and managing deliveries during thepeak period and had established a “control tower” at its Wednesbury sort centre, overseeing volumemanagement, operational action and weather contingency plans. Recruitment of temporary workersbegan in September to ensure extended training, boosting Yodel’s overall workforce to 16,000.
The company said a daytime sort would also be introduced at sort centres, and deliveries wouldalso be increased to seven days a week in order to cope with the additional parcel volumesthroughout December. It said customers would be kept updated with daily performance levels andthree-day weather forecasts to help make all parties aware of potential issues.
Yodel said each of its service and sort centres, as well as all Yodel holding facilities, wouldbe equipped with a minimum stock level of rock salt, snow shovels, ice melt, de-icer and scrapers.In addition, the company now also has snow ploughs available, in order to keep the yards at itssort centres free from snow.
In case of heavy snow, Yodel said it had had contingencies in place for additional storagefacilities at key locations around the country. All service centres would be able to hold upto two days’ capacity locally and once this is full the company has a national holding facility forparcels and access to additional warehousing. It said all parcels would be date stamped, “to ensurea controlled ‘First In, First Out’ process”.
Dick Stead, chairman of Yodel, commented: “Christmas is vitally important to our clients andtheir customers. This cannot be underestimated and our planning for this year’s peak periodbegan in January.
“We maintain a close partnership with our clients throughout the year and their accurateforecasting has enabled us to fine-tune our operation to ensure that we have the correct resourceand are able to react quickly to spikes in parcel volume. As always we have planned for a harshBritish winter and we are confident that we have developed contingencies to ensure that our serviceremains smooth whatever the weather.”
