Hermes UK reports busiest peak season to date
The UK arm of Hermes has confirmed that the recent peak season was its “busiest and most efficient to date”. Throughout December the delivery firm processed 30.3m parcels, representing a 24% increase on the previous year.
Hermes also notched up a successful Black Friday period, processing 8.2m parcels in the week following the major retail event. Throughout the final month of the year, Hermes handled more than one million parcels in a single night on 22 separate occasions..
The busiest day of the year fell on Friday 4 December, when Hermes processed 1.4m parcels.
For the third year running, Hermes offered its customers a Christmas Guarantee, which meant that every parcel that entered the Hermes network, with a UK mainland address, by 23.59 on Monday 21 December had at least one delivery attempt in time for Christmas, or the cost of the delivery was refunded.
Commenting 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.
