Australia Post to increase capacity before peak
Australia Post has committed an additional $400 million in new parcel facilities, fleet and technology by mid-2022 to help service the growing demand for services, bringing total committed investment to more than $1 billion over three years.
This includes recently opened major parcel processing facilities in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide, as well as five brand new facilities currently underway in Perth (WA), Bayswater (VIC), Western Sydney (NSW), Botany (NSW) and Tullamarine (VIC).
The business has also committed an additional $20 million in upgrading systems to cloud based solutions over the next year to improve parcel scanning and tracking in the network.
Australia Post Group Chief Executive Officer & Managing Director Paul Graham said it was essential the business continued to invest in major parcel processing hubs to keep up with the boom in online shopping experienced during the pandemic.
“Australia Post has an unrivalled delivery and post office network. We know our customers want their parcel delivered as quickly and efficiently as possible so that’s why we are further increasing capacity with five brand new processing facilities before our peak period in 2022” Mr Graham said.
“Four of these new facilities are located close to major eCommerce hubs in NSW and Victoria, with the fifth a $42 million investment on the west coast to meet the growing demand for parcel services in Western Australia.
“This is in addition to newly launched facilities in Adelaide and pop-up facilities across the network, adding 30 per cent extra processing capacity this Christmas.
“We are also investing to extend our already extensive last mile delivery network – with a further $31 million committed to the new electric delivery vehicle fleet – which are better for the environment and safer for our people.”
Australia Post has seen online shopping increase by as much as 32 per cent during the pandemic, with the organisation consistently delivering more than 10 million parcels a week across the country.
Over 5.7 million Australian households are now consistently shopping online and it is expected online shopping will continue to grow over the coming years by 9-10 per cent per annum on average over the next decade.
