Recently, some leading postal operators in Europe, such as Belgian Post, Royal Mail, Nordic Post and Norwegian Post, said at the logistics "last mile" event held in London, UK, that in the next few years, the investment in non-delivery to home delivery will increase. At the same time, postal enterprises should also adopt a variety of terminal delivery methods to ensure that customer needs are met.
Participants said that more cooperation is needed for terminal delivery to meet the demand of driver and vehicle shortage and environmental protection.
Belgian Post said that it would increase its investment in non-delivery door-to-door delivery in the future, and add some additional delivery cabinets for returns, so as to reduce the phenomenon that express cabinets are occupied by returned goods. At present, 50% of the use of its express cabinet belongs to the articles delivered by users. Not long ago, Belgian Post just launched a new service that allows residents to deliver packages to other couriers to reduce delivery trips. It is reported that Belgian Post has 2800 parcel delivery outlets in its country, and the company is still increasing such outlets. Belgium Post's diversified terminal delivery methods include express cabinets, parcel outlets and post offices.
Nordic Post currently has about 12000 sets of express cabinets, and plans to increase the number of express cabinets and delivery points to 30000 in the next few years. The group's senior strategic analyst said that the more packages delivered at a time, the lower the cost and the smaller the impact on the environment. Although the group launched the package cabinet network open to carriers in 2019, the promotion was not ideal due to some trust problems. The delivery enterprise believes that the terminal is a very important business, so it is not willing to be handled by other places. However, there are more and more cooperation at the end. In Denmark, DHL and Bring are both using the express cabinets of Nordic Post. For cost reasons, sharing and using the network is more reasonable. Therefore, the Group hopes to achieve integration and cooperation at the end.
Matthew Lawlor, head of the delivery design department of Royal Mail, said that there would be a shortage of resources in the future, and the supply of vehicles would be insufficient, so more vehicles should be kept. In addition, postal enterprises should pay attention to the carbon emissions generated by each package to gain the understanding and trust of customers.
However, some postal enterprises have a special preference for delivery to home service. Norway Post said that due to the decline in the utilization rate of delivery and receiving outlets, the company plans to strengthen the delivery to home service model. Fredrik Lindqvist, head of the Norwegian Postal System and Network Development Department, said that in 2017, 85% of the company's e-commerce delivery was non-delivery to home mode, and only 2% was door-to-door delivery. According to market research in 2018, 46% of Norwegian consumers choose non-delivery to home, and 45% choose delivery to home. The COVID-19 also accelerated this trend, and the business volume of delivering goods to home increased by 460%, a phenomenon that the company has not seen in 20 years. In 2021, the non-delivery business volume of Norwegian Post dropped from 85% to 52%.
On the one hand, Norwegian Post is increasing its investment in receiving and delivery outlets, on the other hand, it is also stepping up the development of a new generation of digital delivery services, and has launched three mobile phone applications, SortApp, Glow, Motivero, and has also established a technology company, Glow Technology, to provide software sales services.