Worldwide parcel volumes increased by 3.7% to 6.7 billion items last year driven by continuede-commerce growth and now account for nearly 20% of postal revenues, according to Universal Postal
Union (UPU) figures.Domestic parcels represent the overwhelming majority of volumes with 6.6 billion items. Butinternational parcels also went up to 67 million items, growing by 5.8% on 2012.
Except for Africa and Asia-Pacific, volumes increased in all regions of the world. Due toinfrastructure problems and heavy competition the Africa and Asia-Pacific regions recorded a slightdecrease, UPU economist José Ansón said. On Asia, he added: “This could be due to that market’sfocus on shipping goods through the Express Mail Service or EMS.”
Meanwhile, the trend of decreasing letter-post traffic also continued as it went down by 2.9% to339.8 billion items. Those include 336.3 billion domestic and 3.5 billion international items.
However, the average weight of individual letter-post items is increasing. A kilogram ofletter-post contained 12.21 items on average in 2010, and contains an average of 10.88 items today.This is mostly caused by more small e-commerce items being moved through the letter-post stream,Ansón explained. “An estimated 240 million small packets travelled through the letter-post streamin 2013. While overall volumes in terms of number of items have decreased, the average weight ofitems is heavier.”
Letter-post still accounts for 43.4% of global postal revenues, which increased by 3% toUS$361.5 billion in 2013. Almost 19% of postal revenues were generated by parcels andlogistics in 2013. Postal financial services contributed 14.5%. “Other services”, meaningnon-postal services, such as retail of mobile-phone cards and similar operations, accounted for23.5% of global revenues.
In 2013 posts reported activity at 663,200 post offices and 5.4 million staff working around theworld. 70% of the establishments are staffed by postal officials, while the rest is run by personsoutside of the official postal sector.
“Despite the transformation that the global postal sector is experiencing, it is interesting tonote that the global network is not retracting,” said Ansón. “Rather than seeing a decline of postoffices or access points and staff, we are seeing a relative stabilisation on both counts. Thepostal web remains the largest physical distribution network on the planet.”
The UPU figures are based on 150 survey responses from the organisation’s 192 members.
