Leading Spanish parcels company SEUR, in which GeoPost holds a 62% share, has invested €2.3 million in a new depot in Jaén in southern Spain, and extended its Pickup parcel points network with SIMPLY supermarkets as it gears up for the peak Christmas season with 1,700 additional workers.
With the depot in Guarromán, a city located in Jaén, in the eastern part of Andalusia, the company aims to optimise product flows and increase productivity, efficiency and service quality while creating 50 new jobs at the site.
Built on a plot covering 19,491 sqm, the depot has an operational area of 14,750 sqm and over 300 sqm in office space. It has 30 docks and features the latest technologies including an automated conveyor belt with a capacity to sort 6,000 packages per hour.
“Our network of hubs enable us to effectively support operational flows and help reduce transit times increasing satisfaction of our customers who can enjoy more flexible operational solutions,” SEUR president Yves Delmas said.
With this opening, the company is strengthening its hub network which currently counts nine transshipment centers and 97 distribution platforms in Spain and Portugal.
Meanwhile, SEUR has extended its Pickup network with the addition of SIMPLY supermarkets to the pick-up and drop-off points (PUDOs). This initiative responds to the needs of consumers who can now collect their packages at the supermarkets and thus profit from greater accessibility, proximity and flexible hours.
As part of a new agreement with SEUR and the supermarket chain, 17 SIMPLY supermarkets have joined the Pickup network in the initial stage. In early 2016, the new service is due to be launched in 120 supermarkets in total.
The objective of SIMPLY is to improve the quality of life for its customers as it enables them to buy everything they need at the supermarket while also benefitting from a range of service needed for the daily life such as parcel delivery.
The Pickup network comprises more than 25,000 PUDOs Europe-wide. It covers the whole of Spain and is expected to reach 1,600 stores in 2017.
To prepare for the busy Christmas period with peak parcel volumes, SEUR, with a permanent workforce of 6,400 staff, is hiring 1,700 temporary workers, an increase of more than 15% compared to last year. Most of the workers will be hired in Madrid, Cataluña, Andalusia and Levante.
The significant increase in transport operations is essentially due to e-commerce growth, in anticipation of holiday shopping and the extension of the Christmas season with discounts until 15 January, 2016. On peak days like the week starting 21 December, 2015, SEUR expects to transport more than half a million parcels per day.
The unstoppable growth in online purchases, which in Spain has reached over 250,000 parcels a day, represents a significant increase in shipping volumes during this period, SEUR explained.
In turn, consumer habits evolve and a trend has established itself of advancing Christmas shopping, with October and November being the favorite months for shoppers to make their Christmas purchases. SEUR has already registered an increase of 20% over normal activity compared to last year, confirming the fact that many Spaniards did not wait until the last minute and have already bought their gifts before December.
For example, the company expects to ship more than one million parcels over the weekend following Black Friday (November 27) with a 25% rise on the 800,000 parcels recorded last year. This online shopping event has established itself in Spain over the last three years, according to the company.
The best-selling sectors during the pre-Christmas period include fashion, electronics, decoration and furniture, gourmet food and large e-commerce platforms. Companies like Zara.com, Mango, BQ, Worten, Westwing or Mimub, among others, have already entrusted their logistics operations to SEUR for delivering their products to customers.
