Belgian postal operator bpost is targeting the growing city distribution market by taking a major stake in start-up firm CityDepot.
The two companies have agreed to join forces, pool their experience and combine their geographic presence to take a leading position on the city distribution market and roll out their service to other parts of the country, bpost announced.
Together they are forming a new entity “CityDepot NV”, to be headed by CityDepot founder Marc Schepers. bpost will be the biggest shareholder and will increase its shareholding in the coming years. The new firm will take over the 25 employees of the existing CityDepot and bpost’s City Logistics activities.
The intention is for CityDepot NV, which is presently active in Brussels, Antwerp and Hasselt, to gradually roll its service out to ten or so additional cities in Belgium.
Bpost CEO Koen Van Gerven and Marc Schepers said: “It is the right time to give a new boost to our clever, environmentally friendly city distribution service. That demands more resources and requires us to combine our forces, experience and corporate values, which are highly complementary. Together we will achieve our great ambition to grow throughout the country.”
CityDepot, which was formed in 2011, was first to launch a city distribution system in Hasselt and subsequently also in Brussels. Goods are consolidated in depots on the outskirts of the city and carried to the final destination in the centre by means of smaller, environmentally friendly means of transport. CityDepot currently delivers annually 70,000 parcels and 15,000 pallets to approx. 2,000 customers.
In 2014 bpost launched a comparable service in Antwerp, under the City Logistics name. Road haulers that have to make deliveries to various places in the city centre and port drop their goods off at a bpost depot at Houtdok. bpost then uses smaller vans to deliver the pallets and parcels to retailers on the same day. At the moment, City Logistics delivers 100 shipments per day in Antwerp city centre for five haulers.
City logistics initiatives reduce traffic in the city centre and are an environmentally friendly and economically attractive alternative to disruptive truck journeys by limiting the number of journeys within the city to what is strictly necessary, bpost explained.
The new venture was announced during a press conference at the Brussels sorting centre, where the world’s first mixed sorting machines (MSMs) have been brought on stream.
bpost said it has become the first postal operator in the world to bring state-of-the-art mixed sorting machines on stream at its Brussels sorting centre. An MSM is able to sort any item up to one centimetre thick at house number level, that is in the right order for delivery during the mail round.
bpost will install twelve MSMs at its five sorting centres this year and plans to double that number over the coming years. The MSMs are of great importance to bpost’s large-scale mail delivery restructuring plan “Vision 2020” to centralise mail delivery preparations at the five sorting centres rather than the current 270 distribution offices. This will allow postmen and women to devote themselves to delivering letters and parcels.
The new Brussels sorting centre is a cornerstone of the company’s Vision 2020. The environmental permit has been issued and the building permit is expected in the near future. Once the term for appeals has expired construction along the canal in Neder-Over-Heembeek will begin immediately. The relocation to the new site is scheduled for completion by the end of 2017.
The new Brussels X will be the biggest of the five Belgian sorting centres, with operational floor space of 70,000 sqm. It will sort letters for Brussels, Flemish Brabant and national addresses, as well as sorting parcels for the whole of Belgium.
Parcel sorting will be completely centralised at the new Brussels X. The new parcel sorting machines that will come on stream in two years will be able to sort 300,000 parcels per day, three times the current capacity. Online stores will be able to drop off their parcels until 2 am for delivery to the end customer just a few hours later.
Van Gerven said: “With new activities such as city-centre deliveries, technological innovations such as MSM and improved customer convenience with regard to parcel deliveries, bpost is able to cope with the fall in traditional mail volumes and systematically raise the efficiency of its working methods.”
