As part of a wider rationalisation of the business, DHL Parcel has taken over the Swedish 1350 service point parcel network that was previously run by DHL Freight. DHL Freight however will remain the partner for transport and delivery of items within Sweden, according to a statement from parent company Deutsche Post DHL.

Fabian Düx, Senior Vice President of Unattended Delivery at DHL Parcel Europe said, “Thanks to this presence in Sweden, we have now integrated the primary market of Northern Europe into our parcel network and passed another milestone on the road to having a dedicated B2C infrastructure for Europe.”

The move will make DHL Parcel the second biggest B2C parcel delivery network in Sweden after its national postal operator. The company will now rebrand the service points into DHL Parcelshops.

With the takeover and rebranding, DHL will now have 10,000 Parcelshops right across Europe outside of Germany, serving customers all over the region that are managed by the same brand.

One of the important aspects of the Swedish market is that few companies actually deliver to customers’ homes in the country and as such the focus has always been on collection points, even before ecommerce raised the ‘click & collect’ idea to the rest of the world. As such the local public will use them with no quibbles about the idea being a new thing. In Sweden, over 90% of all B2C items are delivered to the Parcelshop network already.

The repositioning and rebranding by DHL comes as it tries to establish itself as the market leader in B2C deliveries across Europe. There are only three major players in the international overnight delivery market in Europe, and DHL is the most established brand among them. Competition is fierce in the industry and companies are evolving to meet demand.