DPD is expecting a 15% rise in German parcel volumes during this year’s peak Christmas season rounding off 10% growth for the year as a whole and ahead of planned investment of more than €100 million in infrastructure and technology in 2016.
The parcels company said it is registering record growth in the weeks leading up to Christmas and expects a 15% increase in parcel volumes compared to last year's Christmas season. Parcel deliveries per day are expected to exceed the two million for the first time ever, and at peak times this represents the delivery of around 300,000 parcels an hour to private and business consignees. Volumes in the week before Christmas are predicted to be 50% higher than the average for the year.
DPD will be employing a further 4,000 additional staff to make sure that all parcels arrive reliably and fast during the Christmas season, too.
For the whole of 2015 DPD Germany said it will register an increase in volumes of 10%, which represents the company's most dynamic growth for the past 20 years. The largest proportion of this growth is accounted for by deliveries to private consignees (B2C). At present 35% of parcels shipped by DPD are delivered to private households, and by the year 2018 the company is planning to expand its share of the B2C market from the current 8 – 10% to 15%.
Looking ahead to 2016, DPD Germany said it intends to accelerate growth even further at a double-digit rate, and is planning to invest more than €100 million in infrastructure and technology to cope with this volume increase.
Outlining some of the investments, the company said that this year all Germany locations have been fitted with modern, high-capacity fibre-optic cable connections. Sorting and handling capacity is being expanded at many existing locations and new depots are also being constructed, such as at Dinkelsbühl in Bavaria, which opened early this year, and at Nagold, near Stuttgart, which is currently under construction.
In the expansion of its market share DPD is aiming above all at the premium segment, with extensive digital service innovations enabling the parcel service to provide efficient information flows and flexibility during the busy Christmas period, too. For example, for every parcel DPD provides a precise delivery window of one hour, which in the course of the delivery becomes more accurate down to the last 30 minutes.
During the delivery process consignees can use the map-based Live-Tracking function to see where their Christmas parcel is at any time, and how many stops the driver still has to make before the parcel will arrive. Numerous useful options mean that the delivery can conveniently be adapted to the pre-Christmas stress – in addition to postponing the day of delivery it is also possible for consignees to redirect the parcel, for example to a Pickup parcel shop, a specific neighbour or even their place of work.
The latest example of DPD's digital innovations is the newly developed app. This enables consignees to manage and track their parcel deliveries on all digital devices such as the smartphone or tablet, while on request push messages, even on the Apple Watch, keep them up to date about the latest delivery status.
In Germany, DPD has 76 depots, 6,000 Pickup parcelshops and a workforce of 8,000 employees and 9,000 delivery drivers. The German parcels market number two ships 320 million parcels a year, including for major customers such as adidas, Würth, MGL Metro and Esprit.
