DPDgroup is gearing up to deliver about 20% more parcels than usual this week following the Black Friday – Cyber Monday online sales period, and similar peak volumes in the run-up to Christmas.
Europe’s second-largest parcels operator said in a posting just ahead of this year’s e-retail sales extravaganza that in 2016 the Black Friday week generated a 20% average increase of parcel volumes that it delivered in Europe, with wide discrepancies among countries.
The overall year-end period entails a strong increase of volume handled in the last weeks, it noted. Indeed, in 2016 DPDgroup observed a 20% increase of its volumes during the year-end period, even reaching +35% on some days.
“This year, DPDgroup expects a similar growth of its volumes. Considering the annual increase of traffic and its peaks, DPDgroup plans to deliver more than 6 million parcels per day on the busiest days, at the end of this year.”
In France, La Poste’s B2C unit Colissimo normally handles about one million parcels a day but this figure could easily double this year, rising to 2.5 million parcels daily in the final week before Christmas.
Chronopost expects to deliver about 1.1 million parcels daily in the pre-Christmas week, compared to 990,000 daily in the same period last year and about 500,000 daily on average during the rest of the year. The French express operator was also expecting to deliver about 830,000 ‘Cyber Monday’ parcels this year compared to 770,000 on a normal Monday.
In Germany, DPD is once again expecting record parcel volumes for this year's Christmas season with 15% growth on last year’s volumes. On peak days in the run-up to Christmas, DPD alone delivers more than 300,000 parcels an hour which is 50% more than on an average day during the year.
In Spain, SEUR expects a 20-25% rise in peak volumes.
On an average basis for the year as a whole, DPDgroup delivers 4 million parcels daily to over 230 countries through its commercial brands DPD, Chronopost and SEUR.
