Parcel delivery company Hermes’ UK arm has had its best peak season on record, handling over 30 million parcels between Black Friday and the January Sales. This was a 24% increase on the previous year’s throughput.
The company handled 8.2 million parcels through the Cyber Weekend period, and handled over one million parcels on 22 separate nights through the Festive period. Friday 4 December saw the company process 1.4 million parcels, the busiest night of the entire period.
Hermes has offered a Christmas Guarantee for the last three years where every parcels that enters the Hermes network is guaranteed at least one delivery attempt by 2359 on Monday 21 December or the customer would have their delivery cost refunded.
Speaking of on the peak performance, Carole Woodhead, CEO at Hermes, said: “Our success during the recent peak season is testimony to the meticulous planning between our client managers and retailers, combined with the hard work and dedication displayed by our teams across our hubs, depots and final mile delivery network.
“Last year we also invested in a secondary sortation tier at our fully automated hub in Warrington, opened another 125 sub depots across the UK and added another 3,000 couriers to our network for the peak season. This investment has boosted our overall capacity and helped us to deliver a fantastic service in the lead-up to and after Christmas.”
Hermes added that the myHermes delivery solution saw a 30% increase in volumes throughout December. The myHermes ParcelShop network, which now totals 4,500 outlets across the UK, handled 40% more parcels in December than the previous year.
All delivery companies in the UK focused on last mile e-commerce delivery seem to be reporting very good results this year, reflecting the boom in e-commerce as it expands to meet the receding High Street retail sector.