DHL Parcel CEO Andrej Busch has dismissed the idea of “neutral” parcel boxes in competition tothe company’s own residential boxes for home-owners in Germany.
In an interview with the German transport newspaper DVZ, Busch said neutral parcel boxes wouldcontradict the idea of DHL’s ‘Paketkasten’, which can be bought or rented by home-owners forinstallation in front of their homes and used for deliveries and returns.
Recently, the competitors of DHL in Germany announced that they plan to launch their own,open parcel box system in response. Hermes, DPD, UPS and GLS said they are planning to developtheir own joint provider-neutral parcel boxes in response to DHL’s current rollout ofexclusively-operated residential parcel boxes that it refuses to open up to rivals.
But Busch commented: “The system has to be safe, otherwise it will not work”. In hisopinion, the parcel box wouldn’t be safe if all carriers had access to such an open system.
Moreover, he stated that the DHL “Paketkasten”, which was first trialled one year ago, has beenreceived favourably by most customers, especially people who order lots of items online.
Furthermore, Busch highlighted the potential of online food orders in the future. He wasconfident that online grocers would be a success if the right infrastructure was available. Fooddeliveries would need sufficient cooling and a 100% delivery rate, Busch said. Therefore DHLParcel has built up a dedicated courier network which can reach 30 million people in Germany.
DHL Parcel delivers some 3.4 million parcels every day in Germany with a network of 14,700delivery staff and 9,600 vehicles. The company operates over 2,650 Packstations, 1,000 Paketboxesand more than 10,000 parcel shops.
