PostNL and Dutch company MyParcel.com have come together to form SendMyParcel.com, a UK company that they hope will become the new standard in deliveries for smaller UK online retailers.

UK subsidiary of PostNl, Spring UK has claimed that the new system will be the ultimate solution and for the issues of cost and complications that are often associated with offering customers a greater range of delivery options.

Spring UK’s Head of Channel Craig Lee said that while the system is suitable for online retailers of all sizes, it particularly promises small retailers a better opportunity to compete against the bigger rivals both at home and abroad.

“So many online retailers with which we speak, including those in webshops and marketplaces, want to be able to offer consumers a broad range of delivery services. However, they find that they are prevented from tapping into the kind of facilities which would enable them to grow because their volumes aren’t large enough.

“However, SendMyParcel allows them access to the sort of delivery options which are normally only provided by much larger competitors, such as nominated day or ‘click and collect’, at very competitive price points.

“Furthermore, it’s so straightforward that some firms will even be able to start shipping to customers within hours of signing up.”

Mr Lee indicated that launching SendMyParcel in the UK meant being able to build its cross-border volumes in Europe’s largest e-commerce market ahead of expanding into other major territories.

One recent study suggested that UK consumers had spent £13.9 billion online during the course of 2017 – an increase of 13.65 per cent on the year before.

Lars Vlietman, one of the owners of MyParcel.com , outlined how, instead of onerous integration and subscription fees, SendMyParcel would be free to retailers shipping up to 1,200 packages a year. Those dispatching larger volumes would, he said, be charged on a ‘pay-as-you-go’ basis.

Lars Vlietman, a co-owner of MyParcel.com, added that rather than creating an infrastructure onto which retailers had to bolt their own preferred delivery providers, SendMyParcel was a cloud-based ‘plug and play’ system enabling e-commerce firms to select preferred carriers from a library of pre-loaded partners.

“We recognise that delivery problems are not confined to the SME-tail community. Bigger retailers are often charged many thousands of pounds and forced to wait months for access to new carrier services platforms.

“That’s partly because they’re designed in such a complex and prescriptive fashion. What we’re now able to give them, though, is a platform which overcomes those barriers. It’s a much more simple, quick, flexible and less expensive means of achieving their objectives than anything else currently available.