Carrier
Recap blog: UK Out of Home Delivery featuring Last Mile Experts and Royal Mail
Written by: Parcel Pending By Quadient
3 Min Read
Published: August 27, 2024
Recently, Gary Winter, Vice President of Parcel Locker Solutions at Quadient and Marek Różycki, Managing Partner at Last Mile Experts discussed some of the findings of the Out of Home Delivery in Europe report, homing in on the UK market specifically. During this Videocast Gary and Marek explore the use of parcel lockers and parcel pick-up & drop-off (PUDO) networks in the UK, with input from special guest, Anna Malley, Out of Home Director at Royal Mail.
A Growing Sense of Collaboration
Gary Winter opened the discussion by highlighting that there is a growing sense of collaboration in the UK market, notably the Post Office opening itself up to additional carriers, and Royal Mail doing innovative things to expand its PUDO reach beyond the Post Office.
Gary and Marek go on to discuss the history between the Post Office and Royal Mail. Both are independent organisations – Royal Mail is the parcel and postal service, and Post Office Limited is the retail provider of the network of retail locations – however the relationship between the Post Office and Royal Mail was a unique one which hadn’t been seen elsewhere.
In more recent years Royal Mail has been working collaboratively with Collect+ to expand its PUDO reach beyond post offices, which is breaking almost a 400-year monopoly. They have also joined the Parcel Pending by Quadient agnostic parcel locker network, which now has over 1000 lockers on the ground.
Going beyond the 9-5
Post offices have traditionally been a nine-to-five business, which has been a problem for customers who need to post parcels outside of these hours. However, the Parcel Pending by Quadient agnostic parcel locker network offers 24/7 access, making it more convenient for Royal Mail customers. Gary highlights that 40% of locker activity is outside of the core post office hours, with some parcels being dropped off at 2am, which immediately tells you that there is a demand for that convenience.
Royal Mail has embraced lockers and out-of-home in general. Anna Malley, the Out-of-Home Director for Royal Mail, stated that
“Lockers and parcel shops give customers more options when posting or collecting parcels. Customers really like having local drop-off points available when they want to use them. Over half of the customers stated that their main reason for using the lockers was that they were convenient.”
Quadient is monitoring the network closely and is seeing rapid growth in parcel volume. Royal Mail has only been live with Quadient for a few months, but they are adding more lockers every day to make it more convenient for customers. From last month to this month, Quadient has seen almost 90% month-on-month growth in the parcel volume from Royal Mail.
While Royal Mail has stated its intention to use 1000 of its lockers by the end of the summer, this could be the beginning, not the end of their adoption of this technology. As their customers get more used to the lockers, they will start to see the convenience, and as the density increases, we’ll start to see more people using them.
The UK is the largest e-commerce market in Europe, with more parcels delivered per person per year than any other European country. The UK is an exciting market for Out-of-Home delivery and the rate of adoption of lockers are quickly catching up with some of the big markets in Europe. There is definitely room in the UK market for lockers, and it is exciting to see the potential for significant growth.
