According to an in depth analysis of InPost’s parcel locker scheme by demographic data specialist Mapmechanics, “there is an InPost locker with two miles of all urban consumers in mainland Britain”.

InPost has developed a network of more than 1000 automated parcel lockers across the UK and plans to increase this to 1600 locations by the end of the year.

Prior to the study by Mapmechanic, InPost made the claim that more than 70% of UK postcodes were within five miles of one of its parcel lockers. However, InPost wanted to make more accurate claims, that in the words of the marketing director Tony Kells, would allow the parcel locker company to “make a stronger impact” by “underlining the ease of access” to its lockers.

Mapmechanics published a blog on its website that explained how the analysis was carried out. The company used “the routing engine in Geoconcept, the digital mapping and geographic information system, and Ordnance Survey’s Meridian 2 vector (scalable) road network for Great Britain” to “calculate the drivetime and distance from the centre of every postcode sector in the country to the nearest InPost locker location”.

Mapmechanics has given the data to InPost in spreadsheet format, and has also supplied maps to help the company’s staff visualise the findings that it has made. According to Mapmechanics, “The result: as the InPost team hoped, it can now state with confidence that there is an InPost locker with two miles of all urban consumers in mainland Britain.”

For InPost, this has also enabled the company to get an idea where exactly more parcel lockers are needed and also to generate ‘heat maps’ that show e-commerce hotspots across the UK.

As InPost is still rolling out more parcel lockers the company plans to go back to Mapmechanics at the end of this year for an updated analysis.