DHL Parcel has opened its first ‘Packstation’ parcel locker in Vienna and is planning to install several hundred such terminals across Austria under its €100 million market entry.
The German-based parcels company has already made a rapid rollout of its network since entering the market several months ago, including 1,000 parcel shops and one million parcels delivered by end-October.
The first parcel terminal has been installed on the premises of a Merkur supermarket and offers consumers in Vienna another alternative to receive their parcels and ship prepaid parcels or returns themselves. In the long run, DHL plans to operate several hundred Packstations across the country in busy locations such as supermarkets, train or petrol stations.
"We are proud to have already installed the first DHL Packstation in Vienna, three months after our official launch. Overall, we plan to install 25 of these pick-up and shipping stations in Vienna alone. Supermarkets such as Merkur are ideal for this because people do their shopping here anyway and can integrate the pickup or dispatch of their parcel easily and without any additional routes in their daily routine,” Günter Birnstingl, Managing Director of DHL Parcel Austria, said.
Parcel recipients who are not at home at the time of delivery can pick up their parcels from the nearby Packstation. They can access the respective locker by scanning the code printed on the notification card their received in their letter box.
From next year onwards, parcel recipients in Austria will have the possibility to get their parcel sent directly to a Packstation by indicating the address of the selected DHL Packstation as the delivery address as well as their mobile phone number. As soon as the delivery person puts the parcel in the selected Packstation, the recipient is informed about the delivery via SMS which contains an mTAN as access code. After entering the code, the recipient can open the corresponding locker and take out the parcel.
For shipping returns or prepaid parcels from the DHL Packstation round the clock, customers don’t have to pay an extra charge. In Germany, over eight million customers already use 2,750 DHL Packstations in 1,600 cities and communities.
“We are pleased that the first DHL Packstation in Austria was installed here at our Merkur market so we can offer our customers an extra service. We are currently investigating whether other locations are also suitable for such a Packstation,” Merkur board member Manfred Denner said.
Three months after the official market entry, DHL Parcel Austria claims to have made a good start. “As planned, we could start building our Packstation network in Vienna this year, our parcel shop network already covers 1,000 shops all over Austria which exceed the respective numbers of GLS and DPD shops. In October, we delivered the millionth parcel. We are thus coming a big step closer to our goal of becoming the second largest player in the Austrian B2C business,” Birnstingl concluded.
