E-commerce and new services deliver An Post’s most successful ever parcels’ season

– 1.74 million parcels delivered by An Post

– 27% increase on Christmas period 2016

– 90%+ next-day delivery rate

– AddressPal most popular consumer service

An Post delivered 1.74 million parcels in the five week lead-up to Christmas 2017 – an increase of 27% on the same period last year. This is the highest number of parcels ever delivered by An Post in a Christmas season.

An Post had flagged frenzied Black Friday and Cyber Monday online shopping as a feature of pre-Christmas activity and this held up right through the seasonal boom period. Parcel volumes from key customer Amazon alone showed an increase of more than 30% on 2016. Among the parcel customers featuring heavily in An Post delivery offices over Christmas were Irish brands Arnotts, Brown Thomas, Gifts Direct and Smyths Toys alongside international brands Zara, H&M and IKEA.

An Post secured a greater share of the supply-side parcels market (where the supplier pays) due to an improved service specification which includes Saturday deliveries and later cut-off times for next-day delivery. These changes were agreed with our Union partner in July 2017. An Post also secured a higher share of the consumer parcels market with the extension of the AddressPal service to include AddressPal USA and a returns service ReturnPal.

Mail volumes performed better than expected in December down by just over 6% in the month (in line with global trends of declining mail volumes).

“We saw the growth in Christmas parcel traffic early in play,’’ says Garrett Bridgeman, Managing Director, An Post Mails and Parcels. “We were conscious that this would be an important period for us given the re-launch and re-focus of our parcels business. We had also introduced a range of extra options for customers and these proved both timely and successful.”

As the logistics backbone for e-commerce in Ireland for both shippers and shoppers, our staff turned in a dedicated effort, achieving a next day delivery rate over 90% throughout the Christmas period.”

Quelle: www.anpost.ie

Foto „head“: www.pixabay.com / geralt