Russian delivery operator SPSR Express, which is celebrating its 15-year anniversary this month, recorded strong shipping volume growth of nearly 22% in 2015, compared to 2014, despite the general downturn in Russian economy.
SPSR explained that its double-digit volume growth needs to be seen in the context of a 3.9% GDP drop, a 3.4% decrease in industrial production and a 7.6% decline in Russian road transport volumes compared to 2014.
The company’s revenues amounted to RUB 5.95 billion (€68.7 million) in 2015. While SPSR didn’t publish its revenues for the year 2014, its H1 2015 revenues increased at a double-digit rate of 21% to RUB 3 billion (€34.6 million), compared to the first half of 2014.
According to the estimates of SPSR Express’ research centre, the B2B segment of the Russian express delivery market didn’t generate any growth last year: in monetary terms, it was slightly below the 2014 level and the number of shipments fell by 5-10%. The delivery volumes in monetary terms on the Russian distance selling market increased by around 11%. In view of the current macroeconomic situation in the country, SPSR Express was one of the few express delivery operators showing positive revenue growth in the B2B segment in 2015.
In the e-commerce segment, SPSR Express continued strong growth of 37% in shipping volumes thanks to various successful projects last year. These include partnerships with major Chinese retailers JD.com and DHGate helping them enter the Russian market. For DHGate shoppers, the company implemented the cash-on-delivery option in cooperation with QIWI, specialised in cash payments in Russia. As part of its partnership with AliExpress, SPSR launched a joint order pick-up centre in Moscow where it opened a showroom on the occasion of the 11.11 Global Shopping Festival in November 2015. In addition, it signed logistics contracts with Lenovo and Wileyfox enabling them to ship their products directly from their official internet shops abroad to Russia. Moreover, SPSR launched a unique order fulfillment project on the territory of the European Union for Russian and foreign partners to optimise logistics processes and costs.
The performance of SPSR’s fulfilment centre located in the Moscow region also showed steady growth. Compared to 2014, the number of processed orders in the fulfillment centre almost doubled, thanks to new technologies implemented in the warehouse.
SPSR also renewed its own truck fleet to a significant extent last year. According to its internal policy, SPSR Express does not use vehicles that are older than five years so all of its vehicles meet the environmental standards "Euro-4" and "Euro-5". The delivery fleet upgrade is directly related to the dynamic development of the company and the opening of new delivery routes in 2015, SPSR stressed.
Last year was also marked by the launch of a new product line for e-commerce players, upgrade of additional product options and a significant expansion of the geographical coverage of SPSR’s services. The tariffs for the countries within the Customs Union including Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Armenia were optimised, which corresponds to general strategic objectives of the government, the company explained.
Vladimir Solodkin, founder and CEO of SPSR Express, said: “We are proud of the fact that SPSR Express has been actively involved in shaping the industry, which the development of the Russian economy largely depends on. Over the last 15 years, our company has always grown by at least 20% per year, and in the best years the growth rate even reached 50%. During the anniversary year for the company, which brought the recession both for the industry and the market as a whole, we grew by 21.9% in shipment volume terms, maintaining the positive trend in profitability and EBITDA growth, I believe that this is almost a feat. We will continue on this path since the main strategy of the company is to always grow faster than the market."
