GLS is planning to start a cooperation in the parcels business with DB Schenker next year, GLS confirmed today to CEP-Research following a report by German business newspaper Handelsblatt.
The Royal Mail parcel subsidiary told CEP-Research that it will officially announce the cooperation later this week. According to Handelsblatt, Schenker also confirmed that it will issue an official statement in the course of this week.
As part of the deal, the Deutsche Bahn subsidiary would offer its corporate clients parcel deliveries as an additional service, on top of cargo transport, for example. This is especially interesting for companies and shippers who send goods directly to end-customers.
GLS would take over the deliveries of parcels to the end-customers (home deliveries) while Schenker would be in charge of transporting the cargo on pallets, Handelsblatt wrote.
The service would be launched initially in Germany in 2016, to be rolled out across Europe at a later stage, according to the newspaper report.
This deal would mark Schenker’s entry into the parcels market and enable it to profit from the continuously booming online trade. “Driven by e-commerce, the European parcels market offers excellent growth opportunities,” Ewald Kaiser, Member of the Management Board at Schenker, told Handelsblatt. Schenker expects nine-digit revenues from the deal.
However, Schenker Logistics would enter a highly competitive market which is growing 2-5% each year, Handelsblatt pointed out. Between 2010 and 2014 alone, revenues from express and parcel shipment volumes increased from €14 billion to €16.6 billion. The prospects are promising: according to the country’s CEP industry association BIEK, the number of shipments will rise from 2.8 billion (2014) to 3.8 billion in 2019. This results in carriers fighting for customers, especially with margins in home delivery being extremely low.
