International delivery company DHL Parcel is to offer scheduled time window deliveries right across Germany. It has been offering this service in major urban centres up to now, but has rolled the service out nationwide.

“Regardless of whether they are in Emsland, Brandenburg or Spessart, online shoppers across Germany can now select a two-hour time window between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. for delivery of their DHL parcels during the order process,” said DHL.

Achim Dünnwald, CEO DHL Parcel, said of the new service, “As market leader in the German parcel-delivery business, it is our goal to offer our services in all regions of the country and, in doing so, to make people’s lives easier. With the introduction of a nationwide evening delivery service, we are therefore setting new standards for the time-flexible receipt of parcels.”

DHL said that the expansion will mean that it is now able to offer scheduled evening deliveries for 44 million households. The company said that the option could be “especially interesting” for online food retailing.

Scheduled delivery seems to be a new battlefront for players in the home delivery market. Whether goods from Amazon or grocery chains, businesses across the home delivery sector are competing to offer customers delivery slots within short time periods. Where customer demand is high for this (this is not the case in every country in Europe for example) it seems to be an offering that many delivery businesses are seeking to make.

DHL Parcel being owned by Deutsche Post will likely only offer this across Germany for the medium term but may well roll it out across other territories in the next few years pending customer demand.