Hermes Germany is expecting a new record in shipping volumes during the upcoming Christmas period with an estimated growth of over 15%, boosted by the continuous boom in online trade.
An additional 5,400 staff will be deployed nationwide for the peak period by the company and its 360 cooperating partners.
Thanks to the continuously increasing number of online orders and the positive business climate in Germany as the main growth drivers, Hermes expects an even stronger volume increase than last year (10%) with around 36 million shipments to be sent across Germany during the pre-Christmas peak season.
"This year's Christmas shopping season will become one of the biggest stress tests for parcel services in the history of the German e-commerce because the parcel volumes in our country continue developing only in one direction – upwards. We expect a flood of parcels,” Dirk Rahn, Director Operations, Hermes Logistics Group Germany (HLGD), said.
However, he remains optimistic about the increasing parcel volumes. “Our ultra-modern parcel centres have sufficient capacity to cover even spontaneous delivery peaks without any problems. This summer, we demonstrated that we manage to cope with considerably rising volumes as we transported several hundred thousand additional shipments during the postal strike. It worked out smoothly.”
Traditionally, the company starts experiencing a considerable shipping volume increase from November onwards with the peak expected in mid-December. It is increasing its transport and delivery capacities until January 2016 to be able to manage the growing volumes.
During the peak period, the company’s delivery fleet will also be expanded by up to 3,300 additional vehicles, with 3,000 vehicles being allocated for deliveries alone. On peak days, Hermes will deploy around 12,500 delivery staff to cope with the volume surge across Germany.
The majority of the 5,400 additional full- and part-time workers to be hired for Hermes’ pre-Christmas operations will be deployed for deliveries (around 3,000). Other jobs will be created in the parcel centres and in long-haul transportation. For such long distances, Hermes Transport Logistics (HTL) will deploy 80 additional 7.5 tons and 250 swap vehicles. This corresponds to a transport capacity increase at HTL of 25%.
The temporary staff will be employed depending on availability and deployment duration, either on a basis of a fixed-term contract or via temporary employment agencies bound by a collective labour agreement.
“Thanks to the increased capacity, we still have a leeway should the additional volumes exceed our forecasts. The only thing we cannot calculate are the vagaries of weather. However, if December remains as mild as in the past two years, chances are that we will be able to post a new record in the beginning of January,” Rahn concluded.
